


Universal Constant

by Winterstar



Series: Singularity [2]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Aliens, Angst, Hurt Steve Rogers, Love Triangles, M/M, MTH, Seizures, Sequel, Time Travel, character death from another reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2020-05-12 21:42:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19237660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: It's been a year since the Battle of New York. Tony's only been going out with Steve for less than a month. But he knows something is wrong, something is off about Captain America. A simple lunch date changes everything. Steve decides to break up with Tony and then promptly in front of the whole world - thank you smartphones - drops over and convulses. Tony discovers that the truth about Steve's condition is not medical at all. It has nothing to do with the serum, and everything to do with singularities, quantum mechanics, and other realities...Oh and an alien invasion...Sequel toThe God Machine- Author's notes gives a summary of that story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my Marvel Trumps Hate fic for tonystarkier! I hope you like it!! Tonystarkier asked for a sequel to one of my lesser known stories, The God Machine. I was delighted to try it out. It took me some time because that story is 6 years old and I had to figure out what was going on in my head all those years ago. So this is the result. I think of it as a snapshot of what happens right after the end of The God Machine. 
> 
> For those of you who haven't read The God Machine - a short synopsis follows: 
> 
> The Ornari - an alien race of 'sentient' goo - attacked and devastated Earth. They are looking for what they call The Perfect Seed. The Perfect Seed is needed for the central core of what's called The God Machine. This central core with the seed incorporated into it gives them sentience. Any intelligent sentient species would work, one individual in the core will allow the God Machine to do its job - give them sentience. But the burden on the individual's system leads to their ultimate death. The Ornari are searching the multi-verse for the Perfect Seed - an individual who can heal and recover while the God Machine drains them. They have two choices in the verse presented in the first story - Logan (Wolverine) or Steve Rogers. Logan is a no go since he had adamantium claws - these are poison to the Ornari. So it is only Steve who can be the Perfect Seed. Steve and Tony are heading up the resistance. They decide to use this weakness of the Ornari to change their reality. If they can get Steve to the central core and infect him with a nanite virus which send the Ornari and the God Machine back in time and trap them there, then Earth will be saved. This means in the new reality, Steve won't be with Tony anymore - since it hasn't happened yet. He's with Logan during his year long trip around the world. The plan works, though Tony dies in the process. Steve gets flung to the new reality and wakes up with Logan. He remembers nothing - or doesn't at the beginning. But then slowly the memories of the other time start to return during seizures. Eventually, the seizures get so bad he can bring them on himself. He draws out all the memories. He remembers loving Tony, being with this other Tony in another reality. He remembers being married to Tony. It ends with Steve leaving Logan and traveling back to the US to find his Tony to ask for a chance. Tony smiles and the story ends. This story picks up 3 weeks after the fact. The Ornari never existed in this reality. Tony notices something weird about his boyfriend and Steve triggers the seizures to see a time when he had a loving husband....
> 
> Now with art by snowzapped!

_Steve lies on the bed, alone and staring. He isn’t looking at the high cathedral ceiling, the arching walls of his sparkling apartment in the Avengers’ Tower. He concentrates on the middle distance, the ground between realities where he can see and experience and feel the touch of someone he once loved, but who doesn’t love him anymore, never loved him. He lies there, unafraid as he does, opening the unseen door, letting the seizure overtake him. It is the only time he can visit the reality of his other life, the life he dreamed up._

_While he knows he may very well have dreamed everything up, he also recognizes he never did at all. Yet the loss he feels guts him to the edge of sanity, until he wants to throw himself into the dream, into the seizures and never surface again. Why should he try and continue in this world, when he has nothing left to hold him to it._

_He’s lost everything._

_Logan._

_Tony._

_All he has left are the dreams, and so he triggers the seizures again and again until his mind blurs and he cannot surface, until he’s lost, a distant relic of himself, to time and distance and space._

*oOo*

“It’s weird, is what it is,” Tony says and puts down the tools and wires he’s bundled up on the workbench. He has too much work to do to think about this crap, but then again this is his love life or lacking love life. The tools clank and rattle as he drops them carelessly. The wires are like Christmas lights, he’ll never unknot them. He needs to – they’re from the torso of his latest upgrade to the Iron Man armor. 

“What’s weird about it?” Bruce asks. He strolls around the laboratory with his hands in his pockets and a kind of lost look on his face that shouldn’t be there anymore, especially since it’s been over a year since the Battle of New York. Bruce has kept himself busy in New York while Tony splits his time between California and New York. When Tony shows up, Bruce emerges from his self-imposed exile in the Tower and actually lives and breathes like a human. It makes Tony both self important and guilty. Being Bruce’s friend isn’t the easiest thing that Tony ever tried to do – it’s not the hardest, not by far, but hell, if it is straightforward.

“He stares at me,” Tony replies and abandons the work to turn around and close his arms around his chest. The arc reactor aches today for some reason. “Just stares.”

Bruce frowns. “Aren’t you dating Steve? Maybe he likes the way you look. That might mean something good.”

Tony grits his teeth. He wants to gnash them but that seems too melodramatic for the moment. “Kind of dating? I mean maybe he doesn’t like guys and he’s experimenting with me because he thinks it is the in thing to do these days?”

Bruce shakes his head and makes little noises that dismiss Tony’s words. “No, no, no. We all know that he met up with Logan or Wolverine or whatever that guy is called, and then spent the year with him. They traveled the States, went to Japan. From what I hear they lived together over there. They were an item.”

“An item?”

“Yeah, I talked to him a few times when they were in Japan. I seem to remember they were together, and Steve seemed concerned about you when you broke up with Pepper. I think he even knew Logan from the war, if you can believe it.” He shrugs. “But then again.” Bruce stops and runs a hand through his already messy hair. “I don’t – he was asking weird questions.”

Tony points at Bruce. “There’s that word again.”

“What word?” Bruce finally sits down on a stool and leans into the workbench, elbows on the edge. He picks at the wires Tony tossed to the side. 

“Weird. It’s all weird.” Tony crinkles his forehead. His headache blasts like some of the heavy metal music he listens to while working. He pushes the tightness constricting his eye sockets away and asks, “What kind of weird questions?”

“Not sure entirely.” Bruce gives a halfhearted shrug again as he toys with the wires. He doesn’t focus on Tony. “He talked a little about your drinking problem and Pepper, I do remember that.”

“Shit!” Tony gulps the air in little puffs. Jesus, if Steve knows about his addiction problem – maybe, just maybe he can’t stand Tony. Maybe he’s trying to figure out a way to leave him without hurting him. After all, it had been Steve showing up at the Tower penthouse apartment, bag on shoulder, asking Tony for a chance. All out of the blue. It wasn’t as if they had a history. Steve stood in front of him, the light from the penthouse windows shining over Tony’s shoulders and glinting across his face like the rays on a Greek god. He looked road ragged: exhausted, hungry, and excited as if he’d only just come out of the ice and figured out what the new world around him might offer. It’d been a revelation, those first few days. Tony had been tentative, maybe his pained heart just couldn’t stand the idea of rejection again, but maybe it was the recovery. It always took him some time to come out of his alcoholic haze, to realize that people loved him, or even wanted to be around him. Maybe it scared Steve and he was just looking for a way out now – thus the awkwardness in their dating life. 

Bruce is right – the media went crazy last year with the revelation that Captain America and Wolverine were an item. He remembered hugging a bottle of malt liquor and watching the television reports. Logan and Steve were both hot and they were together. The media ate it up. What was wrong with Tony that Steve kept his distance even though he professed to wanting to be in a relationship? Was it lingering feelings for Wolverine, or was it Tony and his habit of leaping off the wagon into a cesspool of alcohol. It must be the information about the drinking. “Maybe he wants to break up with me because of the drinking?”

Bruce scoffs. “He asked about that before he left Wolverine. He can’t be that upset about the drinking problem.”

“It’s not a problem,” Tony curses. “I have it under control, you know.”

Bruce drags a knotted clump of wires closer and puts on his glasses. “I didn’t say you didn’t. This is your line of reasoning.”

Tony drops back onto his stool. He throws up his hands. “Then I don’t know what’s going on with him.”

“Maybe he wants to have sex?” Bruce states this as if he’s talking about Tony taking Steve out for an ice cream cone and a walk in Central Park. Tony nearly swallows his tongue. He’s not ready for this conversation, not with Bruce and especially not with Steve. When Tony doesn’t respond, Bruce looks away from the pile of tangled wires and studies him instead. Being under the scrutiny of a man about to burst into a green rage monster at any minute unsettles Tony and he inwardly cringes but manages to keep his false facade. Bruce ignores him and asks, “Do you want to have sex with him?”

“Of course, I do! Like ninety percent of the world’s population wants to tap that,” Tony says and picks up a screwdriver just to have something in his hands. He plays a tune on the lab bench. “But, Steve, see? He’s not ready. It’s a big step. You know, going full out gay.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “Don’t mess with me. Or Big Green. What were we just talking about? Steve spent the last year with his old flame, Logan. They went around the country, went around the world. They lived together in Japan. I literally just said this Tony. I mean are you listening to me? They were living the life, happily ever after until – well, who knows what happened.” Bruce’s brows furrow together. “Did you ever find out what happened?”

“No!” Tony jumps up. Now he needs to pace, to move around. This is getting to the nitty gritty of the problem. Anytime Tony’s close to a breakthrough, the energy bubbling through his nerves needs releasing. He has to move. “It’s not like it’s something I bring up when we’re – you know – romancing. In fact, he spends a lot of time asking me about things. About my work, about deep space exploration. Who knew Captain America was a science nerd?”

Bruce finishes detangling all the wires and looks over the lenses of his glasses at Tony. “Maybe you should call up Reed Richards.”

“What? Why? What the fuck does he have to do with it?” Tony stops dead in his tracks. An inkling that he might be missing a vital piece of information pops up and crawls over his skin. “Bruce, what are you not telling me?” He wants to be threatening, but even with all his bravado, Tony knows that provoking a man that can pound him into the wall is not the best life choice.

Bruce yanks off his glasses as if they’ve done him an injustice. He drops his hand, lax in his lap. It looks like his glasses might slip from his fingertips. He huffs out a pent-up breath and then says, “You remember when Logan and Steve were in Japan. Well,” he pauses, “Well, Steve called with some questions about other worlds.”

“Other worlds like Jupiter and Mars?” Tony asks.

Bruce shakes his head. “Like other Earths. Like other realities. He actually asked if it was possible for one person to cross between realities. Like go from universe A to universe B.”

As Tony stares at Bruce, listening to the words, the sunlight illuminating the workshop flickers. Clouds outside the wall of windows obscure the sky, block the sun. It feels colder in the room, though it shouldn’t. The room is climate controlled. JARVIS knows exactly the temperature Tony’s likes it at – but then why is it freezing all the sudden?

“I didn’t have an answer for him, so I told him to call Reed Richards. I know Doctor Richards studies that kind of thing.” Bruce chews on his lower lip.

“Did he call Reed?” The smuck – Tony hated that guy. 

Bruce shakes his head and sighs. “I’ve no idea.”

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Tony loathes Richards. What kind of guy has a last name for a first name and a first name for a last name, anyhow? Tony never pinpointed his reasons why he desists the man, but he just doesn’t like him. The fact the man is so stretchy creeps Tony out. 

“You’re going to go straight to Steve and ask him?” Bruce looks hopeful, as if Tony might actually take it as a hint.

Tony smirks. Hint acknowledged; hint ignored. “No, we’re going to call Richards.”

“Don’t. Don’t do this. Don’t go behind your new boyfriend’s back and start asking about things like this without talking to him first.” Bruce is probably the most earnest guy Tony knows, outside of Steve. Still he doesn’t fall for that wide-eyed look.

“Nope, this calls for the big guns. I know big guns, way more than you do. I need to talk to Reed before I talk to Steve. Get all the background done, you know, my due diligence. All that good stuff.” Grilling Bruce further would yield little results – that much is clear to Tony. He itches to get Richards on the phone and starts to turn away from Bruce to call on JARVIS to do just that, but his AI interrupts him.

“Sir, Captain Rogers is at the workshop door and has requested entrance.”

“Oh,” Tony says and feels like the proverbial kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Oh, I. Hmm.” He looks down at himself as if he expects to find the jar and said cookie. He snaps back to attention and stares at Bruce, looking for an anchor.

Bruce exhales heavily and then says, “Let him in, JARVIS.”

“Thank you, Doctor Banner.”

The door sweeps open and Steve steps into the workshop. His gaze seeks Tony, looking first toward the Iron Man armor hanging near the interface cubby and when he doesn’t find Tony there, he searches the wide laboratory. When he finally sees Tony and Bruce, Steve smiles – broadly. 

“Tony!” He walks into the lab. His shoulders are at ease and he has a jaunt to his step. They’d only started this thing between them. It still percolated brand new, warming and steeping. Steve nods to Bruce as he approached. “Nice to see you, Doctor Banner.”

Tony had to admits, his heart hammered in his chest a little more like a hummingbird when he first sees Steve on any given day. 

Bruce acknowledges Steve but then says, “And I think that’s my exit,” He slips out of the workshop.

Steve glances at the pile of wires and the parts to the disassembled armor on the bench. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were on for lunch today? Are you busy?”

Tony swallows down his sarcastic reply. He wants to say _I was just about to sneak around behind your back and find out why you act so weird_. He forces it down like a spoiled piece of meat and says, “Sure.” He swings his arms. “I’d like that.”

Steve smiles. “Sure you would, like you would like someone to steal your dog.”

“I don’t have a dog.” Tony attempts to relax his face, show an easy demeanor. Facing Steve – his boyfriend – might be a little like walking up the steps to the guillotine.

Steve drops his gaze, stares at his sneakered feet. His hands are stuffed in his back pockets and he looks all the more like a shy jock (yes, oxymoron) trying to ask his crush out on a date. “I just want you to be happy. You said you would try this out.” His words are practically whispered. Tony wonders if he may cry.

“We are trying it out,” Tony says, though his voice sounds more irritated than pleased about their endeavor. He pauses as he studies Steve. He’d read about Steve as a child, about the way he treated Peggy like a goddess and stuttered around women. On the opposite side of the spectrum Tony knows too much, expects too much. “Well I think lunch is a fantastic idea.” He manages to sound more enthusiastic. He is happy to explore this thing – whatever it may be – with Steve. It’s just this creeping suspicion that he doesn’t have all the data. 

Steve’s head pops up and he smiles. He looks all of fifteen. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Let me shut down my workstation and I’ll meet you in the Tower lobby.”

“Really?” Any minute now he’s going to say golly gee and Tony’s going to go all soft and gooey inside. 

“Yes,” Tony agrees and there’s something easy and brilliant in his answer. 

Steve nearly skips out of the workshop and Tony stares after him, lost in the look of the man as he disappears from view. He stands there, frozen by the hope and promise of something more. When he comes to himself, he blows out his held breath and wonders if there’s anything more impossible. The idea of Steve Rogers as a promise, a hope fulfilled still astounds him. It’s only been a few weeks, yet it keeps him off balance. Maybe that’s the reason he sees ghosts trying to upset the possibilities in every shadow. But there are odd instances that he cannot parse, cannot figure out. 

Alone, he can admit that things are even stranger than he wanted to confess to Bruce. While it might be a funny little joke about his lack of a physical relationship with Steve, the fact remains that every time they get close Steve begs off. He hustles away as if Tony’s a swarm of angry bees and he’s allergic. Tony cannot fasten down what’s wrong. Bruce is correct, Steve spent the last year after the Battle of New York traveling the world with Logan. Maybe Steve’s just not interested.

That doesn’t compute and Tony knows it. Just three weeks ago, Steve appeared at Tony’s door with a query, a simple question. To give him a chance. The sun had been bright that day, so golden in its aspect that it set highlights in Steve’s hair, it blushed his cheeks in the light. Tony uttered words, what he said he can’t remember. All he can recall is the warmth that ran through him like a drug. He wanted this – a fantasy come to life.

Yet, Steve couldn’t touch Tony without cringing and racing away. That happens to be the cherry on top when Tony thinks about it. The bizarre middle distance stare, the feeling as if Steve’s walking between his past and present. Maybe Tony isn’t all that Steve had hoped, maybe he’s looking for a way to go back to Logan. Tony throws down the last of his work. If this is going to work, then Steve needs to be honest with him. Starting with lunch today, Tony vows to figure out what the hell is going on.

oOo  
Steve hurries away from the workshop, squeezing his eyes closed and fighting the impending hell that wants to take over his consciousness. He’s not going to let it happen this time. The demon waiting in the wings is not going to crawl over his brain matter and seize it. He gets to the elevator and mutters to JARVIS to take him to his floor. He should just head down to the lobby, but he needs to clear his head – force the demon away – if only for a little while. He wants one day free of it, one day he can look at Tony and not see afterimages of a life before. 

He leans against the back of the elevator as it descends. He grips the rail and closes his eyes. When the elevator opens and JARVIS announces his arrival, Steve jolts and manages to get into his room, struggles to get to the bathroom. He orders JARVIS to sleep mode and then falls on the bed, just feet from the bathroom. All the strength given to him by Project Rebirth means nothing as the seizure overtakes him. 

It comes in dark flashes first, the part that terrifies him. Where he sees the long tendrils of an alien entity reaching out to him. He shivers and fights to be free of the visions, but there’s no going back once he’s succumbed to the seizure. Steve knows he brought this on himself. He invited the seizures so that he could visit a time and a place that never existed. Yet he would give anything to be free of the demon lurking in the shadows of that forgotten future. He grits his teeth as the thing prowls around in his head, sending spears of pain like burns through his neurons. It eases as fast as it came and then suddenly he sees Tony – or his forgotten Tony. The alternate Tony.

Tony’s standing in an underground hidden facility. He has a holograph projected above him in his workshop and Steve can see the battle plans he’s laid out. He wants Steve’s opinion but all he can think about as he stands there like a ghost visiting a life he can never have again, is how very beautiful Tony looks with his hair disheveled and his face marked with grease. 

“You have to get Logan.”

Steve smiles as Tony points to an area on the map. “Last intel, he’s in this area. Do you think you could make it there and back without too much trouble?”

Steve steps to the map – the wooziness of the dream sequence coils in his gut. He nods. He knows this as if he lived it. “The marauders won’t be a problem. It’s the Ornari we have to worry about.”

Tony sighs and drops his hands. He white knuckles his console. “Not we, you. I don’t like you going alone.”

“We don’t have a choice. Resources are limited.”

“I could go,” Tony offers.

“No, you can’t. We have to make it look like you’re working with them. You know that. For this to work,” Steve says, and Tony’s smile dissipates until only the truth lines his face. The fear and the love mix together to show only despondency. He shakes his head and crosses the distance between them. He brings Tony into his embrace and holds him. “This is going to work. We’re going to change everything.”

“Everything,” Tony whispers. “I’m going to lose you.”

“I’ll find you again, I swear it,” Steve says and then kisses the crown of Tony’s head. The feel of arms around him, the weight of Tony against him comforts Steve and he drifts farther and farther away until he opens his eyes again and realizes how long he’s been lying on the bed. 

“Shit!” He jumps up and races to the bathroom to wash his face and get the last vestiges of the seizure off him; it always feels like a thin layer of slime clings to his body when he wakes. He scrubs his face, checks his hair, and then straightens his shoulders. He can do this – the vision is gone – it’s just a dream, a weird quirk, an after effect of being frozen for 70 years. He tells himself these lies, and he heads to the lobby.

He doesn’t believe them a single minute.

*oOo

Tony cleans up, taking extra care to wash the grease from his hands and face. He straightens his hair, puts on a new shirt and even throws on a leather jacket. When he meets Steve in the lobby, the tension he tried to wash away ratchets up. This whole romance teeters on the point of a knife and Tony can’t fathom why. He’s usually so good at this. Romance is his forte. 

On the other hand, Steve seems oblivious to the anxiety threatening to eat its way through Tony’s head and spit out his brains. He offers Tony his arm and they leave the lobby, like any happy couple. 

Steve tentatively starts to talk. 

“Seeing the country was the right thing to do. So many things have changed, but then not. Do you know a lot of the middle of the country seems like stepping back in time?” Steve says and then he goes into details about some obscure towns in the middle of Kansas.

Tony listens and watches Steve. The effort he’s putting out is monumental. He’s focusing on Tony, talking to him. Literally forcing himself to be attentive. It’s outright scary.

When they walk into one of Tony’s favorite delis, Steve pants a few times as if he’s just run a few marathons in a row. He faces Tony and the tense look melts away as he smiles. “Let’s get a table.”

They navigate toward one of the booths in the back. Mid-day, mid-week the deli is busy with Manhattan district workers and inhabitants. It’s a mass of humans in the middle of their day, lost in the mindlessness of daily activity and routines. Before Tony comments, Steve has the menu open and is ordering from a waitress that looks like she’s straight out of the fifties. “And a chocolate milkshake for my boyfriend, extra whip topping and a cherry. No, two cherries please.” He grins at Tony and there’s nothing for it, Tony smiles back.

When the woman takes the menus and promises to be right back with their shakes, Steve turns to Tony and hunches forward as if he wants to conspire and whisper secrets into his ears. “It’s our three week anniversary today.”

“Oh,” Tony says. He wants to say – when did we start counting? The day Steve returned to the Tower? The next day? When they went out the first time. Tony clamps his mouth shut.

“Yeah, I know it’s not a big deal or anything. But to me it is. You’re important, Tony. Really, really important,” Steve says and then adds, “To me.” He’s floundering – Tony can see it. It’s painful to witness even harder to be part of it. Yet the way Steve tries colors the world light and soft. 

Tony feels the rush of blood to his cheeks. He lowers his focus. He’s never bashful, but Steve makes him feel like a middle schooler. 

Steve reaches across the table to grab Tony’s hand. “I know it’s been a little strange. I mean, I only just got back from the road, and from the ice. But we’re good, right? We’re hitting it off?”

He sounds so desperately earnest as if he needs to convince Tony for fear he might lose something. It should be endearing but all Tony thinks is – who asks questions like that? Steve’s desperate for validation as if he worries about losing something so precious and rare that he cannot handle the thought. Yet, as Steve pointed out, they’ve only been involved for three weeks and they’ve never even done the nasty.

The waitress comes back and mercifully saves Tony from answering Steve’s query. Two large milkshakes are placed on the table on little square paper napkins. Steve stares at the napkin under his shake. He starts to pick at it as the waitress leaves them. 

“I don’t mean to be jerk or anything, Tony.” He hisses under his breath and then falls back into the booth, his shoulders sag. “I’m doing this all wrong. It was so much easier before.”

“There, that!” Tony says. He points at Steve. “That! Exactly that!”

Steve turns around looking behind him as if to find the source of Tony’s exclamation. “Wha-What?”

With a cringe, Tony shakes his head. “No. You. That. It’s weird. It’s all very weird.”

Steve rubs his eyes and then drops his hands into his lap. He looks utterly defeated, so different than that man that showed up at his penthouse asking for a chance as if a new day had dawned for the both of them. He doesn’t look at Tony, he keeps his eyes focused elsewhere, internally. “I thought this would work. I really wanted it to. But, I can’t do this to you or to anyone else.” He grabs at the napkin again nearly upsetting the milkshake. He glances up at Tony. “I can get out of your hair by the end of the week. Fury offered me a position in D.C., said I would be an asset to SHIELD. At least I can do something with myself instead of sit around and-.” He left the sentence open like a flag signaling in the wind. 

The fact that he’s giving up, surrendering a failed relationship when Tony hasn’t even decided whether or not said relationship actually fits hurts. Steve has sped through the relationship, hit all the stumbling blocks, achieved them, or smashed through them, and then hit the final wall. All in the space of three weeks. Tony has whiplash from the insanity of Steve internal processing and external reactions. 

“God, have you ever had a relationship before?” Tony says. That’s wrong to state, because hello Logan. But then again, Logan is a special case. He’s not Tony, he’s not a typical human being. In the wake of Steve’s reaction, Tony can only ask, “What the hell did Logan do to you?”

That inferred accusation flashes across Steve’s face like a lightning cracking an overcast sky open. A grimace of anger, fear, and genuine sorrow mix on his features until he’s finally able to put the Captain America veneer back in place. “Logan didn’t do anything. I did it all. Me.” Steve leans to get his wallet out of his back pocket. “Listen, I’ll be out of the Tower by tonight. All I have is the duffle bag anyway. I never really bought anything.” He curses under his breath and for a long god damned minute Tony can’t react. He’s gobsmacked over the course of events. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Tony asks as Steve lays out the money on the table.

“Paying the check,” Steve says. His eyes are too bright as if unshed tears glisten there. “I screwed this whole thing up. I get that, and I am sorry. This is not the way it should have gone or was supposed to go. But then again, things changed – for the better, much better – but the fact is that change.” He shrugs. “It changed everything. I’ll get out-.”

“Of my hair,” Tony finishes. Before Steve’s half out of the booth, Tony catches his wrist. “What the hell was this? Why did you come to me? Why did you leave Logan?” Steve keeps his mouth clamped shut but a twitch of his jaw muscle tells Tony he’s fighting to swallow down the truth. “Bruce said you called him – when you were still with Logan.” Tony rushes because he can feel the tension in Steve’s body ratchet up. He only has seconds before Steve bolts. “Bruce said you asked questions about other realities, that he told you to talk to Richards. Is that true? What’s going on?”

Steve only shakes his head, but there’s terror in his eyes like a rabbit seeing the fox about to pounce. 

“Steve, come on. What’s going on?” When Steve shifts to leave, to escape his grasp, Tony stands up and stays planted in front of him, blocking his route to freedom. “What’s happening? Should I call Logan? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Steve blinks and looks away. There’s such lost in his features that Tony feels as if Steve’s in mourning, in mourning for a death of something, or someone. 

“Is it being here? The here and now? Are you having trouble with adjusting? We can have you talk to a doctor, help you through the PTSD.” Tony taps on his reactor. “I know I should go. Been too much to deal with and I just bury it all.” Steve looks at Tony, meets his gaze. Tony rushes on because he doesn’t have a lot of time to save this – whatever _this_ is. “Sometimes when I think of being in space, you know, up there.” He points to the ceiling of the deli. He’s aware that all of the patrons are watching them, that standing next to the booth, frozen like this is probably being recorded and live-streamed even as he continues. “With the nuke on my back, it all comes back. The feeling of loss and the feeling like a thousand tendrils like snakes are crawling all over me, swallowing me up.”

“Tendrils?”

“Yeah like vipers.”

Steve stares at Tony, but he’s blinking too fast as if shuttling through different memories. Maybe the Battle of New York affected Steve in ways that none of them could possibly understand. A quiver runs up Steve’s arm and Tony snaps to attention. Talking to Logan, maybe even Richards becomes a necessity as he watches Steve battling some internal foe. 

“Steve?”

Steve makes a low grunt then his eyes roll up in his head and he pitches forward into Tony. It’s all Tony can do to keep him up, but then he loses that struggle and they are both on the floor of the diner. Patrons are jumping to their feet. Tony hears the telltale sounds of photos being taken, yet all he can focus on is Steve as he seizes. It doesn’t end. Not like Tony thinks it should. Seizures shouldn’t last as long as it does. Someone is calling an ambulance and someone is helping Tony to get Steve on his side, away from table legs and chairs so he doesn’t hurt himself. The fit goes on and on. By the time the paramedics arrive, Tony is shaking himself as drool puddles under Steve’s cheek as his body betrays him.

Tony closes his eyes and covers his face with his hands. The din of silence comes over him and he only wants to surrender, leave, run away. But he doesn’t. He stands his ground; he realizes he would lay down on the wire for Steve. Someone’s talking to him and Tony frowns. 

He’s able to direct the paramedics to transport Steve to the Tower. No one fights with him or argues. This is Captain America after all. He saved the world, twice. And he’s paying for it, now.

*oOo*  
_The trip had been futile. He hadn’t found Logan._

_He slaps down his gloves onto the seat of the motorcycle. Steve is tired and filthy from the trip. The garage of the compound bustles with energy. Trucks in the bay are being off loaded of their supplies while other vehicles are being prepared for the distance and journey, they will make in order to collect the materials they need to survive in the world these days. Steve chuckles down deep in his chest. He’d thought fighting in a world war was the line between dystopia and peaceful existence._

_He walks into the underground compound that hides the last remnants of humanity away from the invading Ornari. If it hadn’t been for Tony and the Stark business empire, what little is left of the population of the United States probably would have succumbed to the hell of the Ornari invasion. He’ll need to go out in search of Logan again, there’s no time. If they don’t stop the Ornari soon, humanity will be consigned to a dying planet with little left once the aliens leave – if they leave._

_As he navigates through the corridors of their safe haven compound, the exhaustion settles deep in his muscles and bones. He knows that the serum will wipe away the last vestiges of the physical pain of the road, but it will do nothing to save him from the mental stress of it. The thought of looking for Logan, a man he shared a past with, rankles. He would rather leave well enough alone. But when catastrophe loomed over humanity, Steve knew he couldn’t ignore it. He needed to do something, even if it means leaving his husband and looking for an old flame to help them defeat the creepy aliens. The shadows of Ornari haunt Steve’s dreams. They wouldn’t really know what the Ornari looked like if it hadn’t been for their inside person. He still hates the idea of Natasha working with the aliens, pretending to be their liaison between the last of the humans and the Ornari._

_While they projected a typical human type of appearance they are anything but. The Ornari are amorphous beings, with little sentience. Their faceless tentacle bodies slither together in a massive pool of gelatinous biomatter. Their sentience came from what they call the God Machine, a massive central core of their ship. It acted as some kind of computer brain that used the organic matter of the Ornari to interact with the planets they invaded and destroyed. It helped them resemble the occupants of the planet as they pretended to want friendly relations. It all boiled down to one thing. They searched for what they called the Perfect Seed. An organic sentient being to incorporate into the God Machine, to be their brain and their form until they needed the next Perfect Seed. The Seed gave them sentience. The Seed would slowly deteriorate in the core until it was only a dry husk. They’d come to Earth looking for what they called their last Perfect Seed. A human who would regenerate and never die within the confines of the God Machine. There are only two humans on Earth who fit the description._

_Logan is one. Steve is the other._

_Tony and Steve devised a strategy to exploit the Ornari’s search and their need for Logan and Steve. All they had to do now was find Logan. The weight of his failure presses on Steve’s shoulders until he feels like he might just collapse in the middle of the corridor, but he can’t – there are too many people around. Captain America can’t fail, Captain America is more than just a hero – he’s a symbol of success, of saving the world. Just those thoughts load more weight onto his back. Yet, just as he searches for somewhere to duck away from the crowds in the halls, a flash close to him and then someone’s hand grabs his wrist and tugs him into a side corridor._

_“Tony!”_

_Tony puts a finger to his lips and then tilts his head to the door next to them. He twists the knob open and they sneak into the small closet sized room. In the half darkness, Tony pulls a string attached to the bare bulb in the ceiling. It doesn’t add much light to the room; it must only be a 25 watt bulb. Things like light bulbs are scarce these days. Steve’s surprised they even wasted a bulb in the room. He glances around to see a futon and a broken table with a television vhs combo sitting in the room. A stack of ancient video tapes sit near the futon bed._

_“It’s the teens’. They think we don’t know about it,” Tony says and winks. “They hang out in here, watch old movies, and make out.” He grins, hands in his back pockets. “Wanna make out?”_

_Steve grins even during the worst of times Tony can make things so very light and wonderful. He hangs his head and says, “Tony, we have a perfectly good suite of rooms here.”_

_“Which everyone and his brother, sister, cousin, in-laws, Joe blow from down the street – when there were streets-everyone knows about it. As soon as they find out you’re back, they’ll be pounding on our door. We won’t have a minute’s peace,” Tony says. He grasps Steve’s hands. “I want to have a minute’s peace with you.”_

_Steve can’t deny him, he never could. He looks at Tony. “There’s a lot to do.”_

_“And we’ll get right to it as soon as we have some couple time.”_

_“The motorcycle’s reactor is crapping out again. I don’t know why-.”_

_“And your genius husband will hunt down the problem, fix it, and get it working like a purring tiger again, as long as I get to pound into you like a tiger first.” He quirks a brow. “No one will know. I told them I’m working on an upgrade to the nanotechnology. We got at least half hour maybe more before Pepper starts her hunt for you and me.”_

_“Half hour?” Steve asks. It’s not much. They usually spend a lot of time in bed, but he’ll take what he’s given. “I’m filthy.”_

_Tony smirks. “I didn’t know you liked to talk dirty, Captain.” He tilts his head. “Come on, Captain, let me lick you clean.”_

_Steve knows that even in the dim light, Tony can see his cheeks flush. He swallows down the thrill and manages. “The door?”_

_“Locks from the inside and-.” Tony goes to the lock, engages it, and then sets a small device over it. “Will override anyone with a key. It’s all ours, honey.”_

_They don’t even make it to the futon, not all the way. They don’t even fully undress. Steve’s kneeling, bent over the front of the futon, pants down around his ankles, and Tony’s over him – doing exactly what he promised. He pounds into Steve with a wildness that has taken over their lives lately. A desperation to know they are alive, they feel, they can endure. Tony didn’t take enough time to prep Steve. All he really needs is the lube. It’s good, the tightness makes the sweet press and thickness all the better. It stretches Steve to his limits, and he groans through it. The thick glide of Tony’s cock, sliding out and then thrusting back into him sluices through him with knives of desire. His own erection rubs against the rough fabric of the futon, the scrape and grate of it raw against his skin. It should hurt, but all it does is drive him even deeper into his need and he shove backward onto Tony’s heavy cock. The motion widens Steve, stretches his ill prepared flesh to the brink and he cries out as he comes. Tony’s buried to the hilt and he rotates his hips to nudge Steve, throw fuel on the fire. It hurts so much he feels tears sting his eyes, but he never stops. He wants more, he urges Tony with the rock of his body._

_Tony’s talking the whole time. His dialogue a never-ending soliloquy of their life together. “Always wanted you. First time, saw you. God. First time, wanted to rip that stupid – fuck. Stupid uniform. Always want to be inside of you. Want to die like this. God. Fuck. You’re so fucking tight.”_

_It’s a blessing of the serum. Steve’s always tight, but at the same time serum helps him open to Tony. The feel of skin against skin throws him into a new ecstasy as Tony grinds into him. Steve grabs onto the futon, steadying himself as he clenches his teeth. “Harder.” He wants to feel everything. He wants the lights in the world to go out. He wants to feel nothing but Tony inside of him. He wants to have Tony drive every fear out of his skull until he’s only a raw throbbing nerve waiting to explode again._

_Tony moans and then stills as if he’s stopped completely. “Wanna stay in you forever.” He pants. He’s holding back. Steve cries, a weeping escapes him. This is all they have. These moments. Soon, they won’t have anything at all. They won’t have this time, they won’t have each other, they won’t even have these memories. The plan to save the world will destroy everything that they have. It will destroy them._

_“Tony,” Steve murmurs in a low sob. The enormity of it all bears down on him, a weight that both pushes and pulls._

_“God, I love you too damned much,” Tony says and slams forward into Steve. It feels like he’s splitting apart. Open and aching and all of it for Tony. He holds on, holds on for both of them as Tony sets a demanding pace. Steve makes a strangled sound and with it, Tony comes. He’s hot and heavy inside of Steve. Steve’s coming as well, his mind a blank of white and need and satiation all at once._

_Suddenly, Tony lays over him, his breath in Steve’s ear. “God, I didn’t even fucking kiss you.” He sniffles. “I’m sorry, love. I-I don’t want to seem like a cad.”_

_Steve smiles as Tony slowly pulls out, the drag of it sends little thrills through his groin until he’s half hard again. “Not like I stopped you.” His voice is light and airy. He climbs to his feet and manhandles Tony onto the futon. Tony follows without protest. They snuggle together on the bed. “Sometimes I want it hot and heavy like we’re teenagers.” He’s wet and messy and he loves it. He loves the stain of Tony on him, in him._

_“Yeah, well you know how teenagers are.”_

_Steve kisses Tony’s lips and then slowly parts. “Not really. Not like I had any experience back when I was all weedy.”_

_“Don’t you mean reedy?” Tony asks. His hands never stop touching Steve, slowly petting and stroking him._

_“I don’t know what I mean,” Steve replies as the fatigue of the road aches through his bones. “All I know is that I wish this would never end.”_

_They quiet then, because they both know it has to end. They will lose one another – this time, this place -everything. In order to set things right again, the only way they can save the world is to turn back time. Reset everything. How many lives will disappear to save the ones they lost? It doesn’t matter; if they don’t do it the Earth will die. There’s no way to save it now. The Ornari poisoned it and they have no other recourse._

_Tony speaks first. “It doesn’t have to end. We can find another way.”_

_They both know he’s lying. “Let’s not talk about it.” Steve kisses him gently like he will splinter into a thousand shards of glass. “Let’s stay here, let’s make love.”_

_And they do. They make a slow, horrible love that sweeps Steve into a pure kind of bliss as he penetrates Tony. He boxes each moment they are together as if he can package them and send them through the space time continuum for his previous self to remember, so that he can have his husband back again someday. He locks away the softness of Tony’s look when he shows, exposed, the love he feels for Steve. He collects the warmth inside his own chest when he kisses Tony and feels the hunger in his reply. He wraps every feeling together and keeps it safe, secures it so that his past self might know to take the path to find Tony and forge a future with him. The idea of not having Tony, of being separate from him leaves Steve bereft of hope._

_He cries when he comes again, when they both orgasm again. Tears stain both of their faces._

_For a while, they only stay silent, neither wanting to face the day or face their fears. Finally, Tony kisses Steve long and hard. He whispers, “I love you.”_

_“I love you always. I will never not love you,” Steve vows, because it’s true._

_Slowly, they dress. Their clothes had come off with carelessness, but now they help each other. Buttoning and fastening with care. Their hands never leave one another. Standing in the center of the little room, Tony nods. His hands are on Steve’s shoulders. “Ready?”_

_“As ever,” Steve says and sighs. There are times in his life that even he can’t fight the good fight all day. He’d rather leave it to others, but he knows he cannot. “Let’s go.”_

_Tony clicks the device off of the door and then unlocks it. When he opens it, both Steve and Tony are confronted by Miles and Gwen standing there with a pick and key._

_“Miles,” Tony says._

_“Gwen,” Steve adds._

_The two teenagers only stare at them, their mouths agape._

_“Good seeing you,” Steve says._

_Tony clasps his hand and tugs him around the stunned teenagers. As they walk away, Tony says over his shoulder, “Got the bed nice and warm for you.”_

_Steve mutters a curse as he quickens their pace. “Was that necessary?”_

_“Sure it was!” He winks at Steve. “Just hope the kid has condoms.”_

_Steve shakes his head but can’t help but smile. Somehow Tony found a way for them to forget the world and have a refuge. Sure reality intruded in their thoughts, but not in their moment. They were able to exist in their love, through their love. Maybe, Steve thinks, just maybe these moments all packaged up may somehow echo through time and they’ll find one another again._

_Maybe._

_He smiles. “Maybe.”_

_Tony stops, causing Steve to stop too. “What?”_

_The light arcs around Tony like a halo of sun and fire and hope. “Nothing. Just remembering the future.”_

*oOo*  
Tony convinces the paramedics to transport Steve to the Tower. It didn’t take much but now Tony wonders if it was worth it. Not one doctor, not Bruce, not anyone can tell what the hell is wrong with Captain America. He literally had a seizure, dropped over like a drunk in the middle of the diner, and went into a fit that terrified Tony and probably half the rest of the world. Every major news outlet and some of the shadier ones are carrying smartphone footage of the event. Every pundit and crackpot doctor is hacking away at the reasons for Captain America’s sudden sickness. Some attribute it to the ice, saying Captain America is rapidly aging and will die soon – they’ve even managed to show men of advanced age who kind of look like Steve. They don’t outright say that it’s Steve but they elude to it. Others attribute it to some kind of new alien invasion that targeted Steve in particular, trying to take away the leader of the Avengers, before the full out new incursion occurs. There’s even another theory that the germs that resided in the ice with Steve infected his brain and like the known brain eating amoeba are slowly devouring his neural networks. 

None of that is true, of course. Yet, Tony still has no answers. He sits in the hospital room in the Tower. His mind blank and his head throbbing as he watches Steve. They aren’t in love, not yet anyway. Tony admits he could easily fall for Steve. In fact, over the past three weeks he actively worked not to fall head over heels for him. There had been a time that Tony would have jumped in with both feet, but he’d ruined enough relationships to learn that it’s better to tread lightly and softly during the formative period. 

Truth be told, though, Tony had seen the way Steve looked at him. Even when they were just hanging around, watching a movie in Tony’s private theater, he would catch Steve staring at him with a tender look of such love and trust that it felt like a little death. Something special, something unexplainable had happened and Tony missed it. He hates that the moment flashed by and, for all his genius, he never recognized it. How does someone fall in love with you from a far and you never know it? He asks himself this over and over.

“Tony?”

He might hear his name called a few times before he finally looks up from his crouched position in the chair next to Steve’s bed. It’s Bruce. He blinks a few times, rubs at his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Two in the morning,” Bruce says. He glances at Steve. The monitors around the bed beep and stream data. With a wave, Bruce gestures for Tony to follow him. 

One last look at Steve who just might be his future, Tony climbs to his feet and follows Bruce. Out in the hall near the nurse’s station, Tony stops and shoves his hands in his back pockets. “Yeah?” It seems foolish now, all that shit he grilled Bruce about earlier. How weird Steve acted, how he would gaze at Tony without saying anything. All that time, Steve had needed his help, probably knew something was physically wrong with him but hadn’t reached out. 

“The doctors say he’s just sleeping now.”

“Well, that must be one great dream because he won’t wake up,” Tony says.

“I get that. The monitors read normal sleep patterns, but his brain is acting like he’s in a coma,” Bruce says. “They would like to do a PET scan of his brain. See if there’s something there.”

“See if there’s a mass or something actively growing in there.” Tony runs his hands through his already messed hair. How the hell could Steve end up with a tumor in his head? The serum mustn’t be functioning. “So there’s something wrong with the serum.”

Bruce frowns and exhales heavily. “I don’t know. We really don’t know a lot right now, Tony.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Tony closes his eyes and the remnants of the news stories run through his head on speed. “What?” He drops his head and glares at Bruce. “You haven’t heard? It’s some kind of superbug from the Ice Age that Steve was contaminated with when he went under. It’s going to kill us all.”

Bruce bites back his reply but then puts up a hand. “Okay, I get that it’s frustrating, that your boyfriend is hurting. But don’t take it out on me.”

“Take it out?” Tony spins around, he needs to get out, get away. Boyfriend. God, Steve is his boyfriend. A weird boyfriend, but still one that Tony teetered on the edge of their cliff of falling. He’d purposefully kept his distance, just pretending he wanted to get into Captain America’s pants. All the while his heart skipped beats when Steve walked in the room. His hands sweated when Steve smiled at him. His breath escaped his lungs when Steve clasped his hand. What the hell was he thinking. He’d fallen the day Steve showed up in his penthouse and asked for a chance. Who else had ever asked Tony Stark for a chance, so innocently? 

“I’m trying to help you, Tony. I’m honestly trying to help Steve. He doesn’t deserve this.” He steps away from Tony. “I’m going to get some of the samples of his blood. Work to see if the serum is still intact.”

“We don’t already know that?” Tony asks. “You just said he has cancer!”

“I never said he has cancer!” Bruce spits back. He shakes as he fists his hands. “Don’t test me. I said we need to check his head. That’s all. I’m checking the serum every hour to see if there’s any change in the activity.” He blows air out of his nostrils. “I gotta go.” He marches off, not looking back at Tony.

A rough breath leaves him. He needs to ground himself. The idea of losing Steve shouldn’t fuck him up so much. The first stage of a relationship is infatuation after all. Tony walks back to Steve’s room, enter,s and spots a nurse checking the read out on the computer. She goes to touch Steve and Tony snaps, “What are you doing?”

The nurse whips around to look at him. “I’m getting the hourly sample Doctor Banner requested.” She has a small plastic carrier with phlebotomy supplies in it. 

The sample. Bruce just mentioned it. Tony knows that’s exactly what she’s doing, but hell if he doesn’t trust her. He forces his raging heart to stop drumming in his ears. “Did he-.” He swallows and starts again. “Did he wake up while you were in here at all?”

She smiles and reminds Tony of a little pixie. “No, sir. I’m sorry there’s been no change at all.” She offers him another smile which should comfort Tony but only makes him all the more nervous. 

She takes the sample and then leaves. Tony observed her silently from the opposite side of the bed. He watched the flow of the red blood into the small test tube. It spurted it and then flowed filling up the tube. Blood isn’t red, not like a stop sign. It’s a deep abiding color that flirts with black. Black like the abyss of space. A shiver runs up Tony’s spine and he steps to the bed. 

Cupping Steve’s hand in his own Tony grasps the slack fingers. “I don’t know you. Not like I want to. When you came to me asking for a chance, I thought you were cute, adorable in an innocent, naïve kind of way. But I have a feeling you were never naïve at all. You know something, you knew this would happen, didn’t you? You were trying to speed things up. Always asking things that didn’t seem right.” Tony finds he’s sniffling. “What’s going on Steve? Why is this happening?”

Steve doesn’t answer. He’s frozen in the bed, trapped in some nightmare kind of sleep. It’s somewhere between a coma and slumber. 

Tony growls under his breath. With a curse he leaves Steve in the hospital room and finds his way up to his penthouse. He should stay at Steve’s side, but he doesn’t know if that’s the correct protocol. They haven’t even been going out for a month. Should he stand vigil? He wanders through his penthouse, ignoring the lights and goes directly to his bedroom. 

Dropping down onto the bed, Tony stares up at the ceiling. He can’t make out the details, but he hears the conversation he’d had with Steve only a few days before this horrible day.

Steve laid next to him on the couch. They’d snuggled after eating pizza and drinking too much beer. Steve somehow managed to get his body notched into the back of the couch, Tony rested on top of him. He listened to Steve’s heart. They hadn’t been physical but somehow this felt more intimate to Tony than anything he’d ever done before with anyone else. 

“Ma liked the twilight. When the day was done, she told me that time was when all things were possible in the middle of night and day.” Steve had one arm resting on Tony’s back. The other he raised in the air and wove a tapestry – a story of his mother and his childhood. Tony imagined the words of Sarah Rogers telling her young, sick son about the magic of twilight. “She’d tell me there was nothing to be afraid of in the dark. The dark is just heaven close to Earth, she’d say.”

Tony watched Steve’s hand, his long strong fingers as he painted the air. He imagined starlight at Steve’s fingertips, and he smiled into his chest. He could get used to it; he could fall in love with Steve. He forced himself to take a step back, knowing all too well that vulnerability was the last thing he needed. 

Now, as he lies on the bed and listens to his cluttered mind, all Tony can do is ask why did he waste his time? No one knows what’s happening to Steve. No one knows how grave it is. All they know is that he’s trapped in some middle state. Tony throws his arms above his head, what was he thinking? He always skirted being serious, not letting anything profound touch him. Profundity had weight, a gravity to it that enveloped and drowned. He hated the suffocating feeling of it, but the truth is his brain burns with the idea of losing Steve. 

Three weeks? It might as well have been three years.

He flops over and crawls up to the pillows. Tony doesn’t deny there are tears in his eyes. The stress. He blames it on all of the stress. The tears turn into true weeping, but it’s quiet and dignified – if crying can ever be dignified. Why can’t he let himself love? Why did he keep Steve at arm’s length while all the time flirting and playing with him? How come he didn’t know his time with Steve might be abruptly cut off. 

He falls asleep like that, groggy with tears. When he wakes it’s too early, the sun is just creeping out over the of the edge of the city. Tony glances at the daylight glinting off the girders of New York City. A sleeping giant of metal and steel. He hangs at the window, staring down at his city. He shouldn’t have stayed. He should have gone back to California. But instead, he ended up here with Steve. 

Coffee helps wash away his melancholy and revs up his brain to tackle the problem at hand. Tony has JARVIS connect him with Bruce as soon as the good doctor wakes up. 

“Brucy bear, been waiting for you to wake up. What’s the word on the serum samples?” Tony says as he pours another cup of coffee in the penthouse kitchen. 

Hanging over him is a hologram of Bruce in his night shirt and sweats. “Hmm, there’s been another development.”

Tony nearly drops his coffee mug. He places the cup on the granite counter and then turns to face the image of Bruce. “Development? When? And why wasn’t I informed immediately?”

Bruce looks like he just rolled out of bed and Tony’s strained tone doesn’t move him at all. “It’s nothing bad. Steve’s still in stable condition last I checked.”

“Last you checked?” Tony curses under his breath before he adds, “So, what’s the news?” 

“I got a call last night. From Logan.”

Tony reaches for his coffee again. He pretends he didn’t hear the name. Of course, Logan would know that Steve’s been ill. Someone would have to be a mole not to know that the world had its eyes on Steve’s condition. “So Logan?” He sips his coffee. It takes like mud in his mouth.

“Yeah, he’s coming. Should arrive by mid-day. He was already in transit when he called,” Bruce says. “I think he might have some info about these seizures.”

“Logan?” His mind jitters takes a moment or more to catch up. “Logan knows about the seizures?” Tony slams down the mug. “I’m coming to you. Stay there. Where are you? Don’t answer that, I’ll have JARVIS bring me to you.”

Bruce protests. “No, Tony. Don’t. It’s not an emergency. I just want to eat my breakfast and do my med-. Are you even listening to me?”

“Not really,” Tony says as he races away. He’s in the elevator and can still hear the hologram image of Bruce talking in his kitchen. JARVIS doesn’t need Tony to command him to send the lift to Bruce’s floor. It’s automatic and efficient. Sometimes JARVIS is the only one who understands Tony. 

By the time Tony reaches Bruce’s floor in the Tower, he’s vibrating so hard he thinks he might shake his teeth right out of his head. Walking out of the lift, he scans the living room – Bruce has it decorated with a small sculpted waterfall where the fireplace should be. A few cushions are situated near the water as it cascades down black rocks. Each rock glimmers in the lighting. It’s mesmerizing but Tony tears himself away and heads toward the kitchen which proves to be more utilitarian than the living room. Bruce is standing by the counter with a tea mug and playing with the string of the bag he’s dunking repeatedly. 

“Why? Tony, why are you here?” Bruce squeezes his face up like he has a headache. “You never come here.”

“True,” Tony says and goes to the cupboard to search for mug. “Never have been here. Time to change that. Maybe we should have tea more often.” He selects a mug, tests the kettle on the stove with the back of his hand to see if it’s still hot. It is. He pours a cup after he picks out a tea bag. 

Bruce watches him with a dull look in his eyes but doesn’t complain. Once he finishes, Bruce points to the small bistro table set he has set up in the corner of the small kitchen.

Tony sits and turns around as he checks out the space. The kitchen has no character which surprises Tony. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t design this.”

“No, you didn’t.” Bruce doesn’t elaborate. “So. Logan?”

“Logan.” Tony waits to hear what Bruce has to say. “Well?” He sips the tea. He doesn’t like tea. Why is he pretending? He gags a little, smiles, and blinks a few times as he sets the mug onto the table. 

“Logan seems to know about the seizures. Says Steve’s been suffering from them for a while. Not sure how long. But said that they pinned it down to something,” Bruce says. “He didn’t tell me much. No details. He’ll be here by mid-day.”

“God,” Tony says and hangs his head. Suddenly, everything feels heavy, his head, his eyes. He pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I’m not sure what’s happening Bruce. But this thing, this seizure thing has changed something for me.”

“What do you mean?”

Tony doesn’t look up right away. He keeps his eyes closed as he concentrates on the feeling. “Like I’m missing something. Like if I lose Steve now, I’ve lost every chance I could have had. If I lose him, then the world’s gone askew.” He looks up then, his eyes ache. “I know that sounds like I’ve lost it. But I haven’t. I swear it.”

“You got it bad for him, Tony. That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Bruce says. He shrugs out of time with what he’s saying as if he’s not comfortable with his own body. 

“It’s not that. It is, but it isn’t,” Tony says. “I don’t think I can’t explain it, but the seizure. It felt like the air around him – it crackled? I don’t know. Maybe I’m making this up now when I think back on it.”

“You didn’t say anything before, Tony. Are you sure?” 

“It just occurred to me. Every time I think about it, I feel something different, something deeper.” He sees it over and again in his head, the moment Steve dropped down to the floor. It will always be a memory seared into his head, but it’s different now. The memory is changing. Maybe Tony’s ill, maybe it’s early signs of dementia. That’s not it, and Tony knows it. It’s something different, something worse.

“It’s more, isn’t it?” It feels like Bruce is whispering in his ear but he hasn’t moved; he’s sitting across from Tony. He leans forward, seeking to find what Tony only knows.

What does he know?

He lets his mouth talk without thinking; it feels like he’s in a trance. “Shadows. It wasn’t like lightning, not like what you would think crackles would be. It wasn’t like Thor was there with his hammer and his power. The space around him crackled and split. Like it whipped around him.”

“It is magic? Maybe we should get in touch with Thor,” Bruce says.

With those words the otherness that enveloped Tony dissipates and he shivers, suddenly chilled as if he stood too long outside in the middle of winter. “No. Yes. Maybe.” He realizes he’s staring down at the teacup. He shakes his head. “We need to talk to Richards. If Steve called him and if Logan knows about these seizures then I bet they called him about it.”

“But how could Richards know anything about a medical problem?” Bruce asks. The furrow around his eyes, the concerned worry in his features mirrors the ache in Tony’s chest. 

“Who said it was a medical problem?” Tony jumps out of his seat. “The doctors don’t know. They can’t figure it out. They’re looking for a needle in a haystack, but the needle isn’t there.”

Bruce raises a hand. “You don’t know that. We have to let the doctors-.”

“No,” Tony says. “No, we don’t. I’m getting Richards on the phone.”

Bruce shrugs and runs a hand through his tangled hair. He always looks besieged but that’s the nature of the beast he holds within him, Tony supposes. “Shouldn’t we wait to hear what Logan has to say?” 

“Yeah. No. We need to get all the information we can now,” Tony says but turns away from Bruce. He can’t face that a man who loves Steve is on his way. A man who Steve loved is coming. All this time Tony’s been fooling himself. Steve isn’t shy or naïve. He’s a man who has been loved and has loved another man. It’s only been a few short weeks. Inwardly, Tony admits his foolishness, his blind eye that he turned when Steve demonstrated a dichotomy of needs. He both wanted and shunned Tony as if he played a dual role in the relationship. As if he both wanted to pursue a relationship with Tony but felt guilty over leaving Logan. Tony tries his damnest to ignore it and forge ahead. “I’m going to get dressed and go see Steve. I’ll get JARVIS to set up a call with Richards. I want you to be on it.”

Bruce relents. “Sure, Tony.” 

He moves to leave Bruce in peace with his weird root tea and his meditation, but his friend catches his arm. “He feels deeply for you, Tony. Everyone can see it.”

Tony looks at Bruce, looks at how familiar they are to one another. Bruce has been living in the Tower since the Battle of New York. Steve’s only just returned. How could they feel anything other than simple infatuation at this point? Yet, the idea of losing Steve to this medical condition or to Logan grips Tony in the chest like a vice and tightens so that the arc reactor wants to pop out of his chest. Tony rubs at the casing of the arc reactor.

“We’ll see,” Tony says and escapes. He needs to get to his penthouse, maybe get a drink. HE doesn’t care how early it is in the morning. He walks to the elevator and JARVIS kindly helps him leave since the lift awaits him. Without a command, JARVIS sends the elevator to Tony’s floor. When he steps out of the lift, the light from the glare of the cityscape shines into the windows along the wall of the main room. It’s glorious and beautiful and Tony wants to appreciate it, but all he can think about is the fact that Steve appeared less than a month ago and Tony was standing right there, peering out onto the city thinking about leaving New York for good. But Steve stopped him, Steve asked him for a chance. “Maybe I did this to him.”

The idea strikes him like a knife to the chest. The dark shadows that seized Steve and threw him into a comatose state flicker at the edge of Tony’s consciousness. He shudders and rubs at his eyes. “Fuck.” The stress eats at his sanity. 

He heads toward the back, to his bedroom. He used to share the room with Pepper, but she’s long gone – back to California. He misses her but she’s happier now. Tony can’t blame her; she didn’t sign up to be a girlfriend of a superhero. It’s not an easy job. Plus, he’s not sure he ever treated her right, not how he should have. A boyfriend should be attentive, a boyfriend should know that his significant other is allergic to strawberries. Tony should know what the hell is wrong with Steve. 

Often, a faraway look crossed over Steve’s features and seconds later he would excuse himself and disappear. Later Tony would find him staring blankly out into the middle distance. None of it made sense until now. Logan had said Steve was suffering from seizures. Tony missed it. How the fuck did he miss it?

He strips down and goes to his ensuite bathroom. JARVIS already has the water running from the multiple showerheads. Steam fills the marble tiled room. He steps into the large walk in shower, the cascade of water hits him, and he stands in the middle of it. The water pelts him from different angles, and he closes his eyes. For long minutes, his mind goes blank and he washes away the last day. Like nothing ever happened.

Like everything happened.

Tony’s standing there. Vine like tendrils surround him. They slither and curve around him. In the very near distance he hears Steve calling for him. Tony jerks and turns around, the vines disappear and he standing in the shower, the water pouring over him. He’s cold – in the middle of a steaming hot bathroom. He rubs at his face and ducks his head under the water. “Shit.” 

The memories of a hole in space haunt him. Quickly he cleans up and shuts off the shower. He towel dries his hair. With little effort Tony dresses in jeans and a long sleeved black t-shirt. He doesn’t even care what’s on the front of it. His mind’s focused on Steve. By the time he shoves a poptart (why does he have these wretched things in his penthouse – Thor isn’t around) down his gullet, he’s on the elevator to the medical floor. When he arrives, the doctors are huddled at the nurses’ station. He should check in with them, but he doesn’t – he heads directly to their only current patient (The Tower also has a medical facility on the first floor for people who cannot afford healthcare. That clinic is full time – 24/7. Most of the doctors – top notch- if they sign on as medical staff for Tony Stark and the rest of the Avengers have to put in their time in the free clinic. It all works out). 

Tony notices that one of the doctor trails behind him, but he doesn’t decrease his pace. Tony sweeps into the ICU room, startling the nurse who sits at a small console monitoring Steve’s vital signs. She has a small kindle in her hand, and Tony nearly barks at her. She swiftly pockets the kindle in her white coat. He says nothing but goes to Steve’s bedside. 

Anyone observing would say that Steve is asleep. The doctor that still hangs behind Tony confirms it. “He’s only sleeping but no matter what we do, he’s not waking up.”

“Sleeping?” He looks too young, too innocent. But how can a man who’s seen the horrors of World War II ever be called innocent. The war itself devoured that decades ago. 

“He’s dreaming. We can tell because of the stage of sleep he’s in.” There are probes netted over Steve’s head. “I can’t say much else, sir. We could try to give him a stimulant if you want to see if we could wake him.”

Tony shakes his head. He doesn’t want to play around with the serum or Steve’s consciousness until he’s talked to Richards and Logan’s arrived. “He’s safe? Right now?” Tony turns to look at the doctor for the first time. The man is older than Tony, but his eyes are probably kinder. He hasn’t seen the devastation and the betrayals that Tony’s seen over the years. “He’s not in any danger.”

The doctor smiles. It’s kind and soft. “He’s safe. At this time, there’s no evidence of seizure or coma. He’s sleeping.”

He nods to the doctor who reads it as his exit which Tony is grateful for his perceptiveness. Once the doctor leaves, Tony walks up to the bed and touches Steve’s hand. He doesn’t pick it up, or hold it, he just grazes a finger over the back of his hand. “I used to dream of you. Do you know that? Probably not. When you first came back and then went on your road trip.” He pauses to brush his hand gently over Steve’s. “After I broke up with Pepper, I used to think about you. Maybe it was always you. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been a little broken. It’s in my DNA. My father searched for you, for years and years. I always thought about you. You know.” He laughs a little. “I was the one who told Fury to look for you again. It was a snarky remark. I told him if he didn’t want me for his boy band then he should go and look for Captain America.” Tony hadn’t phrased it so politely then. 

He sighs and it hurts his chest. Everything hurts. “Don’t leave. Not now. I know you have a secret and I hate secrets. I need to know what’s going on. I need to know why you are so god damned sure about us being together. It’s like you know something, something about me, or you, or us, or our future. God, what do you know?” He picks up Steve’s hand then and holds it, grasps it like it is a lifeline toward the future.

And maybe it is. 

_A brief flash as if a bright light exploded directly in front of his face burns out his visual field and then he’s standing in a corridor. It’s white and obviously underground. There are pipes lining the ceiling and wires adjacent to them (that can’t be up to code). The swift motion of people all around him jolts him and then Steve’s walking up to him, smiling._

_“There you are,” Steve says. “I thought we were meeting in your lab.”_

_“I don’t.” He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know where the lab is. He doesn’t know what the fuck is going on._

_Steve doesn’t notice his confusion. Instead he grasps Tony’s hand and says, “We can skip the lab. Logan’s drinking anyway. We have time.” His eyes are gentle but passionate at the same time. “Let’s go back to our rooms. Just for a while.”_

_Tony agrees and something feels right about it. Steve tugs him along, hand in hand. As they approach the rooms, Tony feels something on his left ring finger. He looks down and sees the ring. A ring that matches the one on Steve’s hand. He might stumble as Steve leads the way, but it never deters him, they keep moving forward. As they make their way through the bowels of this strange yet familiar place, Tony observes the people. They are from all walks of life and they smile and wave at him – like he’s important in a different way than he’s used to all his life. It’s not a paparazzi kind of thing or amazed kind of deal. It’s something far different. It’s respect and love. It’s something he’s long for all his life and never seemed to have achieved._

_By the time they get to the rooms that Steve tells him are theirs, Tony’s blown away by the depth of feeling in this place. This strange and beautiful place. But then when the door closes and Steve kisses him, takes his hands and holds Tony’s jaw, cups it like he’s precious and wondrous to Steve it floors Tony. He nearly drops, but Steve’s there to hold him, to kiss him. The kiss means everything to Tony, and it wakes up something in Tony that he never knew was there. A path toward something. Away from the dark shadows that lurk, the tendrils of oily black that haunt him. Tony falls into the kiss like it’s his savior, like it’s a messenger to something more, something better. And it is. Steve responds in kind and they’re taking clothes off, falling over one another. Steve guides him to a bed, he didn’t know was there and they’re never not kissing. How they manage Tony doesn’t know. They are always kissing, always touching as Steve somehow produces a tube and fumbles with it. Asking Tony, pleading with him as they wrap around one another._

_Tony’s achingly hard, so hard he thinks if he even touches himself, he’ll spill right then and there. He should ask what the hell is happening, why is he doing this, but it feels a little like he’s in a dream but also that he’s watching from a far, but also that he’s in someone else’s body. It shivers through him and he needs to touch Steve, to keep touching him. And so he follows Steve’s lead. He feels the voyeur and he can’t help but be even more than turned on by it. Should he tell this Steve that he isn’t who Steve thinks he is. Should he tell him that something’s wrong. That he’s of two minds._

_Tony says nothing, not yet because Steve’s underneath him, kissing him, his legs wrapped around Tony. Their cocks are gliding over one another, the graze of skin so fucking perverse and perfect that incoherent thoughts muddle his head. Sounds are coming out of Tony, sounds of pure want, but also he’s hearing the pant and plead of Steve in his ears._

_“Love you, Tony. Love you so much.” There’s desperation there. A desperation of want and of something more. “Don’t want to go. Please don’t let me go.” He’s holding onto Tony as if his whole world is going to fall apart. As if they are doomed somehow. Maybe it’s whatever has happened to Steve. Maybe this is some kind of coded message, that Steve is dying._

_Tony can’t say a word because Steve’s suckling on his neck, hitting the tender spot and making everything go soft and fluid inside of his brain. Maybe it is the lack of oxygen and blood in his head as it all streams down to his cock. Tony can’t think. He’s caught up in the moment, following Steve’s lead._

_“Want you inside of me. Don’t want to lose this.” Steve opens up and jerks his body up against Tony._

_Something black and whispery creeps into Tony’s vision. He stops and looks down at Steve. It’s the dark tendrils. They slither out of everywhere, they shadow Steve, they encompass him. Tony shuffles away, quickly as the bed turns into a thicket of the vines and Steve’s captured by them, bond and gagged by them. A spear of light streams from Steve’s chest. A whirlpool of dark around him, swirled but the light – the singular light arcs up like a beacon. When Tony looks at Steve he doesn’t really exist anymore. He’s just a figment and the space around him reminds Tony of a black hole. Dark, so dark but then flashing with a halo of light along the periphery, light that’s being consumed and defeated into the void._

“Sir? Mister Stark, are you okay?”

Tony jolts and realizes he’s still standing at Steve’s hospital bedside. He hasn’t moved, but the nurse with the kindle is next to him, keeping him on his feet with one hand on his upper arm and another on his abdomen. He jerks away from her and focuses on Steve. She doesn’t react – thank god- but does step away. When he looks at Steve, nothing is amiss. In his mind he can still feel Steve’s touch, he can still experience every subtle beauty, but the echoes of horror whisper over the vision. 

“I have to call Richards.”

He doesn’t explain anything more. He only flees from the hospital floor. Doctors approach him as he beelines it to the elevators, but he only waves them off. Getting on the lift, JARVIS thankfully reads his mind and closes the doors before anyone can follow him. He sinks to the floor. “What the hell was that?” His fantasies never go from hot and bothered to fucking nightmare in one go. That’s not how Tony works. His body quakes and a cold creeps up his spine. His whole body rebels on him, shivering against a cold that’s just not there. Tony blinks several times, trying to focus, trying to get his mind away from what just happened. He loved every minute with Steve in that dream, but not the rest of it. What the fuck just happened? And why did it happen?

“Sir?”

Tony rubs at his face as he realizes the elevator door is open and JARVIS is gently prodding him to exit. He does with only a little difficulty. JARVIS notes that he’s brewed fresh coffee to Tony in the kitchen. He heads that way and tells his AI. “Get Richards on the phone.”

“He is on hold now, sir.”

“You know me too well.”

“Yes sir,” JARVIS says, and maybe Tony only imagines the softness in his voice. 

As Tony pours his coffee, he tells JARVIS to put Richards through to the open line right after he gets Bruce here. It takes a while and he’s sure Richards is steamed, but Tony doesn’t give a shit. This is Steve. This is Captain America they are talking about, so Richards can fucking wait a minute. Bruce, bless his heart, joins Tony in the kitchen in record time. He looks a little harried, and his hair is dripping wet. Tony interrupted his shower, which demonstrates just how important Steve is to all of them – not just Tony. For some reason this helps Tony get through the next few minutes. 

“JARVIS patch Richards through,” Tony says and then gestures to Bruce, offering him coffee. Bruce declines with a wave of his hand. He settles down on the stool at the kitchen island.

“Stark this better be good. I’ve been waiting over a half hour.”

Tony should apologize. He doesn’t. “It concerns Captain America.”

“Rogers?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “What other Captain America do you know?”

“You’d be surprised.”

Tony wants to yell, _what’s that supposed to mean_ when Bruce jumps in and keeps them on track. “Reed, Bruce Banner here, we need to know a little about what Steve talked to you about when he was in Japan.”

“Rogers had another seizure. It’s all over the internet,” Reed says. JARVIS plops down a holograph interface with Reed standing in what looks like his lab in the Baxter building. He doesn’t look arrogant, just contrite and a little sad. “I talked to him a little about realities. Different realities.”

“Did he tell you anything about why he was asking?” 

Tony bites his lips. He doesn’t want to scream – get to the god damned point because I think I might be going a little nuts myself. 

Richards eyes them and then nods. “I can share the recording of the call. I kept it on file because of the subject matter.”

“A recording?” Tony jerks in surprise. “You have a recording?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Richards puts his index finger up to indicate to wait. Freak ass long finger if anyone asked Tony. “Here we go. Right here.” He triggers it.

_“Richards.”_

_“Doctor Richards, it’s Steve Rogers.”_

It’s eerie hearing Steve’s voice knowing that he’s a few floors down, sleeping in that wonderland of hope and horror. There’s no visual but Tony feels his heart hammer in his chest. 

_“Steve Rogers?”_

_“Captain America.”_

_“Oh, what can I do for you?” Richards asks._

Steve goes through a long description of the seizures he’s been having. He explains how the seizures aren’t convulsions at all, but episodes where he lives an entirely different life. He details how the seizures first started and how each and every one became more in depth like he first saw a trailer to a movie, then saw a sneak peek, then saw the movie, and then finally read the book. Each seizure offered more information, turning visions into a new reality. 

_In this reality, or dream, whatever you want to call it, the world’s been laid waste by the Ornari. They’re looking for the Perfect Seed to put in their God Machine. The Machine helps keep them sentient as far as I can tell. Otherwise their nebulous tendrils. Or something. I don’t know.”_

Bruce shares a glance with Tony as he chews on his thumb nail. 

Richards voice on the recording chimes in _“You say these aliens are like liquid and need a solid sentient being to fuel a machine and to bring them sentience?”_

_“As far as I understand it, sir,” Steve says._

_“Well, from my observations of other realities, that’s the Ornari. I’ve only rarely heard of them in the different realities I’ve studied.”_

_“In the dreams, we’ve mounted a response, a counterattack. Each time the Ornari find someone to put in their God Machine it slowly drains them, kills them. But if they find the Perfect Seed, someone who can continually renew and heal, then they will never have to do it again. They will be safe, all powerful, forever.” Steve stops and then starts again. “So, our plan in these dreams or whatever I’m having is to give them the Perfect Seed- me. And Logan, Wolverine, will come as well. Once I’m connected to the God Machine, Logan will deliver a virus to the machine through his claw. The virus has something like nanites or something, I don’t know. That part is never clear. Whatever it is- it’s on his claws and he has to deliver the virus through my heart. The adamantium of his claws is poison to them, but especially the God Machine. The nanites will cause the Ornari to be stuck in a time loop or something.”_

_“That fascinating.”_

_“Do you have any information on if you think they are targeting our reality?”_

On the recording Steve’s voice isn’t as strong as it normally is – it sounds cut, slashed of hope.

_“Strange you should ask that, according to my counterpart in one of the other realities, I would say no, not anymore.”_

_“I don’t understand, sir?”_

_“It seems the Ornari disappeared a short while ago. We can’t trace them at all.”_

_“And that’s a good thing?”_

_“That and the fact you described flinging them backward in time and then trapping them in a singularity.”_

_“So, this can’t happen now?”_ Steve sounds relieved now, as if a weight has been lifted from him. 

_“It can and did,” Richards says. “For you, Captain. For the rest of us, no, it never happened and never will.”_

_“What’s so special about me?” Steve asks._

_“You were in the singularity, you are the singularity. You were central to their Core as you said, you became the singularity and trapped them, Steve. You controlled them through the code that was written by Stark. You control the singularity. It must have been brilliant code, wish I could have seen it. Stark, that bastard. The Ornari are in the endless loop.”_

Tony can’t help but smile. The idea that his other self, in some other reality is that smart tickles him with pride. The smile drops as soon as he hears Steve’s next question. 

_“But does that mean I’ll have these seizures the rest of my life?”_

_“You said you’ve learned to bring them on yourself?” Richards asks._

_“Yes.”_

_“While I’m not a medical doctor, I would say that you can learn to control them entirely. Figure out what the triggers are, and you’ll be able to either remove them, recognize them, and stop the seizures.”_

_“I have a question.”_ That’s Logan, Tony almost forgot he might be on the call too. 

_“Oh, um, yes? Who is this?”_

_“Just don’t worry about it, I was there too. I was the one who delivered the code to cause the Ornari to be flung into this singularity shit. Why don’t I have seizures?”_

_Richards sighs. “I can only imagine it is because Steve was hooked up to the God Machine as he calls it. He and all the Ornari were connected through his interface. You were only connected through your adamantium claw. I would assume that would leave you behind because it is poison to the Ornari as you said. I would also assume both Stark and the Black Widow were already dead and would not have been integrated as Steve was but absorbed if I follow what you told me, Captain.”_

_“Oh. That makes all kinds of sense.”_

_“It does, doesn’t it?”_

Richards stops the recording and faces Tony. “That’s all there is. I don’t have anything else. I did some studies in other realities to pin down what these Ornari are. Really nasty creatures. Come in and literally consume the worlds they invade. All the while they look for what they say is the Perfect Seed.”

Tony only half listens to what Richards is spouting, because one thing rings a bell, loud and clear in his head. _I would also assume both Stark and the Black Widow were already dead and would not have been integrated as Steve was but absorbed if I follow what you told me, Captain._ He glances at Bruce and then says, “That’s not it. That’s not true.”

“What’s not true?” Richards says. His perfect face perturbed by Tony’s statement.

“The whole shit about me in that other reality dead or something. I wasn’t dead. Not dead or am not dead. Whatever. I just- no.”

Bruce scrunches up his face trying to follow Tony’s reasoning. “What are you saying Tony? You’re not making sense?”

“I mean,” Tony says and starts to pace in the kitchen. “I mean that I mustn’t have died. Not really – not in the Ornari reality.”

“What does that mean?” Bruce says and he’s getting a little green around the gills. 

“It means I’m starting to remember.”

“That’s incredible! Truly fascinating. I suggest you come to my lab-.” 

Bruce stops Richards. “We’ll get back to you. JARVIS terminate the connection.” 

The hologram instantly disappears with no protests detected from Richards. Tony assumes Richards will be pissed, highly pissed but won’t show it, because he’ll want to know what the hell is going on as well. If they need Richards in the future to figure this shit out, he’ll be there, Tony’s is sure. 

Right now, Bruce stares at him like Tony’s about to go nuclear. “What is going on?”

“I don’t know, Bruce, I really don’t. I told you about the crackles?” Tony takes a sip of his coffee. It’s bitter and cold. “Well, there’s more. I’ve been getting this feeling like I’m being shadowed, like someone is stalking me. I get this image of like dark inky tentacles or vines coming after me. I don’t know.”

“Damn, Tony. You know what this means?”

Tony puts the mug in the sink. His stomach flips over. Everything feels rancid. He wants to vomit. “There’s more. I had a vision or something today when I went to visit Steve. I saw him. In the underground facility that he described. I saw him and I -.” The rest dies in his month. Not like ash. It’s too precious to share, if he shares it – it won’t be his anymore. It will be a piece of the puzzle, and nothing more.

Before Bruce can comment, JARVIS announces, “Sir, Logan also known as Wolverine, has arrived.”

Tony lets out a breath. He doesn’t want to face Steve’s ex, but he’s the best link to all of this that they have. Bruce nods to him and they both head to the main lounge and entrance to the penthouse. Logan is standing there, duffle bag on his shoulder, and hands in his pockets. He looks like a bear just waking up after an interrupted nap. There’s no hello, there’s no polite salutation. “Where’s Steve?”

“Resting,” Tony says and already hates the man. Irrationally he blames Logan for this, for what’s happened to Steve. He forces himself to be polite. He listens to Pepper in his head – show some manners Tony. “He hasn’t woken up since he had the seizure. The doctors say he’s just sleeping now.”

“Yeah, that happens,” Logan says and steps down into the living room. The way he walks down the few stairs teeters on falling but he’s always in control. That much is clear. “He had a seizure or slept for two days once. He’s not well.”

“Yeah think?” Tony can’t stop himself from spitting out the sarcasm. 

Bruce glares at Tony in silence reproach before he turns to Logan and asks, “Do you need something to drink? To eat?”

“So we’re being polite to the company,” Tony mutters but Logan ignores him.

“A beer would be nice.”

“Sure, sure,” Bruce says and hurries back to the kitchen.

Tony doesn’t want to play the ‘be polite’ game. He’s done with all of that. He’s tired and cranky. He wants to know what the hell is going on. He zeroes in on Logan. The weary look of a traveler stains him, but he always looks like he’s been slapped in the mud and set out to dry like that. “You knew about this?”

“Yeah,” Logan says and thanks Bruce when he’s handed a beer. He sits down without waiting for an invitation. “Steve’s his own man. He does what he wants. He left me. Not the other way around. He left me for you. I thought the two of you would be happy little love birds by now.”

“Sure.” Tony thinks he wants to stab Logan. In the eyeball. He fights the urge. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

“Good, because right now you don’t need to be dead.”

Tony very much doubts that but decides not to press the point. He crosses his arms over his chest, doesn’t sit down, and knows he’s radiating confrontational prick. “So, you got anything that can help us out?”

Logan reaches over and puts his bottle on the table – no coaster. The heathen. He yanks his duffle bag over to the couch from where he dropped it on the floor. Pulling it open he retrieves a folder. “Steve thinks he took them all. He didn’t. I swiped a few before he left.” Logan opens the portfolio and spreads the drawings out on the table. “He started to draw all of what he saw during his seizures. It literally told the whole story. Like some kind of comic book.” Logan orders them and then taps the table. “Evidently you’re married to him in this other timeline or reality.”

Tony inches forward, he doesn’t want to see it, but it’s like a car wreck. He has to look, there’s no stopping him from gaping at the collision. Everything does collide in his brain – the images sketched out in front of him slot into place like pieces in a circuit board. It’s so easy to see, he knows it all. “Shit. Fuck. God damn.” He picks up one of the papers and sees the drawing of Steve perched over him in a tent. “We were on our way to meet them. The Ornari,” Tony mumbles. “We stopped to rest. We-.” Tony swallows down the rest because he can feel the lasting impression of making love to Steve. Tears prickle in the corners of his eyes. “This doesn’t make sense. None of this happened.”

“It did in another reality,” Bruce says.

“To another Steve,” Tony says and throws the paper on the table. He glares at Logan and then at Bruce. “Realities don’t work that way. This reality.” He points at the table with all of the drawings. “isn’t my reality. It isn’t our reality. Steve- our Steve shouldn’t be here with me, chasing after this.” It hurts like a son a of a bitch to say it, but it’s fucking true. “Because this – these drawings are just a fantasy. He’s supposed to be with you.” 

Logan shakes his head. “I’m sorry to tell you, bub, but the truth is he’s both. He’s in that reality and this one and it fucks us all up. And it seems like you might be in both too.”

“He’s right,” Bruce says stopping Tony from denying the truth. “If you’re remembering it as well, you’re in both realities too. It’s only a matter of time before you-.”

“Start seizing,” Tony says. He finally drops into a chair. “Fuck.” 

“Maybe we should call Richards back up?” Bruce offers and places a hand on Tony’s shoulder. That’s a hard thing for Bruce to do, he always stays hands off. 

“Not yet,” Tony says. He leans forward, giving Bruce the opportunity to free himself which he does but he goes and sits down close to Tony – offering what support he can from there. “What did the recording say?”

Bruce looks at Logan and then at Tony. “Just to update you we contacted Reed Richards and he let us listen in on a recording of Steve asking him about the Ornari.”

“Got that in one.”

Bruce turns back to Tony. “The recording said that the virus or whatever was delivered to the God Machine wrenched them back in time – a time before they invaded Earth I would assume – and trapped that Steve in a singularity with the Ornari.”

“That means we can’t get Steve out of the singularity without releasing them as well,” Tony says. “He’s the singularity, he’s the fulcrum. If we find a way to release him, then the Ornari come here.”

“Looking for him, or worse,” Logan says. 

“The serum makes him the Perfect Seed, right?” Bruce asks. Logan only nods in response. “But the question is how he is – the other Steve, the other Tony – linked to our Steve, and our Tony.”

“Entanglement, quantum entanglement,” Tony says. Of course, it makes perfect sense, in a weird physics kind of way. 

“Maybe, maybe.” Bruce is up, pacing around the living room.

“Can someone clue me in? Is quantum whatever some kind of nerd orgy?” Logan asks.

“You could say that,” Tony says and he’s on his feet as well. “Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in physics, in the most elementary description of how sub atomic particles act. It happens with pairs of particles. When they interact or are close in a quantum state then they become linked in how you can describe them. You cannot describe one without describing the other regardless of how far they are apart, because they influence each other.”

Logan takes out a cigar but doesn’t light it. He just lets it hang out of his mouth. “So you’re entangled with your other selves.”

“Seems so,” Tony says. “It means-.”

“You said sub-atomic, you’re not sub-atomic.”

“Nope, Newton physics should apply, but this is some weird ass stuff we’re getting into,” Tony agrees. “So somehow or another this applies.”

Bruce screws up his face and he looks a little like he’s sucking on a lemon. “What about-.” He spins on his heels. “I don’t know a lot about it, but I was reading in Scientific America-.”

“You read that crap? Come on now, that’s as bad as reading Popular Mechanics,” Tony admonishes 

“Hey, I read Popular Mechanics.” Tony frowns at Logan, but the X-man shrugs and adds, “It’s very soothing.”

Tony doesn’t want to know why the man needs to be soothed or when for that matter. Before he can comment, though, Bruce continues, “No, Tony, listen. It’s the Kiminshy Proposition.”

“Kiminsky?” The light dawns. Tony shakes his head. “No, no. Kiminsky was not talking about entanglement. He was talking about -.”

“About other realities and how they influence one another. So take that a step further and you have entanglement,” Bruce says and he’s jabbing his finger in the air. Also, Tony’s pretty sure he’s looking a little more green.

“On a massive scale. That’s entanglement on a universal scale.”

“Not if we consider that each universe is a particle in a grander, larger universe.” 

Logan pipes in with a low growl that might be the word – shit – Tony’s not sure. 

“The implications,” Tony mutters. “Reality entanglement.”

“Yeah, that means that whatever you did in the future – which would be a different reality – would affect this new reality. That means that the reality where Steve’s a singularity affects this one.”

“It also means that we can’t split them apart. That’s impossible with quantum entanglement. Particles influence one another and predict one another regardless of how far apart they are- but-.” Tony stops. He’s missing something, something vital – something that changes everything. The clock above the fireplace– the one that Pepper made him put there years ago – rings the hour. “Shit!” Tony looks at Bruce. “Time. Time!”

“Time.”

“Time for what?” Logan asks as he gnaws on the unlit cigar.

“Time to call Richards again. We need to isolate Steve.” 

Isolate Steve, the words send chills up Tony’s spine. Logan’s on his feet about to pounce, but Tony puts his hand up like a shield. “Not isolate our Steve, isolate the other Steve – the one in the singularity.”

“Aren’t they one and the same?” Logan asks. 

It’s mind boggling and dizzying to even consider. Maybe at one time as a graduate student, Tony and his pals played around with the idea of space-time but the truth of the matter is that they never really thought about it at length – there was no need to because time travel and different realities had been the stuff of science fiction. But now, an alternate Tony Stark invented some kind of nanotechnology that would trap all alternate Steve in the vortex of a singularity thereby throwing the entire reality through time and space and getting rid of the Ornari and the damage they’d done. They reset the clock while at the same time eliminating the threat. Somewhere along the lines they ended up entangling Steve and most probably Tony with their alternate selves. 

“Let’s give him a call,” Tony says as Bruce tries to go through the basics of time travel and reality hopping with Logan.

“It’s not like what you’ve seen in the movies. You can’t change your past,” Bruce says. “When Tony in the future invented some way to ‘erase’ what happened, what he did was create another reality, not erase the past.”

“If our past doesn’t change then how come we don’t remember the Ornari reality?” Logan asks.

“Most probably because they played with time. You, Steve, and the other me, we twisted time, entangled it within the singularity and warped it. It’s the only explanation,” Tony says. “They didn’t erase the past, they just trapped it with the Ornari and the other Steve.”

“So is that other Steve, is he alive?” Logan asks. 

Bruce shakes his head. “I don’t know.” Tony agrees. He has no idea. 

“So our Steve, the only reason he remembers any of what happened in the intervening year is because of the entanglement, not because he lived it,” Logan deduces.

Tony doesn’t want to agree, because that means the Steve that’s laying down in the medical bay, the one he’s having all these feelings for, the one he’s been dating for nearly a month – he really doesn’t have memories. Not the memories sketched all over the papers on the coffee table, not the memories of Tony as his husband. Tony’s going to lose something he never had, and it fucking rends him, tears him apart. Maybe it’s his own entanglement. Maybe that’s it. Maybe once they isolate the alternate reality, then Tony won’t feel hollowed out and empty.

“Sir, Doctor Richards is back in the line again,” JARVIS announces.

Tony blinks away the sinking feeling, but not really. It stays hovering over him like a shadow. He swallows down his exhaustion and fear to ask, “Richards, you there?”

“Yes, Stark. What is it?” Richards appears through the holographic projectors in the room. He looks annoyed but not overly so.

“We think we figured it out. Our Steve and the alternate Steve are entangled.”

“Quantum entanglement happens at the sub-atomic level. Newtonian physics applies on the macro-level.”

“True, but what if we supposition that the universe is a particle and other realities are other particles. Then entanglement works. Newton physics is the law for our daily lives but not for the space-time continuum and understanding it,” Tony says. He can see Richards shift around uncomfortably like he has ants crawling up his legs. “Entanglement talks about space and distance but it also must rely on time. So-.”

“So, you need to untangle the alternate Steve?” Richards says.

“We can’t do that,” Tony replies. “You know we can’t Richards.”

“Yeah the principal of time travel – you can’t change the past – but that’s what they tried to do.” He slaps his hands and there’s a weird result where he stretches for a second and then returns to normal. It’s freaky. “They split realities and when they played around with a singularity shot the new reality at a different time.”

“Yep,” Tony says. “So we need to isolate that singularity. Otherwise it’s going to encroach on our reality. Since that alternate Steve is affecting our Steve, and I’m getting echoes too-.”

“You are?” Richards asks.

“Yeah, yeah-.”

Bruce jumps in – clearly anxious to get answers. “Do you think we can isolate the singularity?”

“Maybe,” Richards crosses his arms and they seem like someone drew him wrong – like they’re too long. “Maybe? A time loop?”

“Nah,” Tony says and shakes his head. “I think that’s already in play in a way.”

“How about a pocket universe?” 

“How do you create a pocket universe?” Bruce asks. 

Logan has been quiet. He watches both Tony and Bruce hash out the particulars. Tony knows he’s happy, if this works then Steve won’t have that link to the Steve who loved Tony. Not anymore. 

“We don’t need to create it,” Tony says. “The other reality is a pocket universe already. We just have separate it.” 

“Entanglement, Tony.” Bruce nearly sing songs it to him. 

“What if we keep twisting it?” Tony asks. “I mean you know how you can twist and twist something until it breaks – what if we kept it up. Kept up the entanglement until you can’t really tell which particle is reacting and which is acting.”

“Would it merge the two?” Richards replies.

“Fuck this is giving me a headache. I’m going to get something to eat,” Logan says and walks toward the kitchen. Tony should worry about how he knows where to go and how he just makes himself comfortable, but Richards pulls him back into the conversation.

“It could and we don’t want to have the Ornari here.” A moebius strip is not the way to go, it would turn the events inside out and lead to someone missing their grandmother or some shit. Logan was right this whole thing gives him a headache. “That’s one thing to consider. The Ornari are not in both realities, right?”

Richards confirms the information. 

“So if they’re not here we don’t have two perfectly aligned particles. The entanglement-.”

“Could be undone,” Bruce says. “But how?”

“Nanites,” Tony says. “I did it before. I should be able to do it again. We have to introduce nanites into the system or systems that are affected by the entanglement.”

“You and Steve.”

Tony nods to Bruce. “It seems so. If I can program nanites to recognize the different particles and then differentiate between the two, maybe just maybe they’ll untangle.” 

“That seems a little impossible,” Richards says. “But I’m sure you have it under control. So if you’ll let me go, gentlemen.” 

Before Tony can even say goodbye, the connections cuts out. If this works, Tony might lose Steve forever. Steve will still remember the memories of someone else, but it will be like a movie he’s seen, slowly fading into the distance of time. Logan walks back into the living room with a massive sandwich in hand. He chews it like a cow and then chugs some beer.

Sitting down, Logan says, “Now you know how I feel.”

“Shut up.” He knows it’s not polite and he should at least feel some sympathy for the guy but he feels shitty and he doesn’t think he has the strength to pull it together and be buddies with the guy who’s going to steal Steve away from him. 

*oOo*

_Steve enters Tony’s underground workshop. It’s a marvel even though it is nothing like the one he had in the Tower all that time ago. Here in their sanctuary away from the Ornari, Tony managed to put together a state of the art laboratory to build and create and to save the whole world. Every day, Steve’s more grateful for Tony and more in love with his husband. Yet when he dwells on these thoughts his resolve slackens and he wants to walk away, to disappear, but he can’t. The world is counting on them to do something, anything to stop the destruction of the Ornari._

_Exhaling the tension, Steve focuses on the present. Today he’s not going on a trip to find Logan or to surrender himself to the Ornari. They are nowhere close to figuring the whole plan out. Tony has half a plan. Well, more than 80% of a plan. He just needs working nanites that will do their job and twist time like a moebius strip, but at the same time not invoke the grandmother paradox. Of course, it will depend on whether or not their understanding inter-dimensional time travel correctly._

_“I can hear you thinking and it’s distracting me.” Tony sits at his console. Monitors half circle him and he has a matrix of holographs projected. Each one is probably a different permutation of the nanotechnology that Tony’s trying to invent._

_“Sorry, I hope it wasn’t too muddled,” Steve says and steps closer to Tony, only an arm’s length away. He would love to touch him, to hold him. Each moment they get closer to a solution means another moment stolen from their time together._

_“You? Captain America’s thoughts muddled. I thought they were always black and white,” Tony says and spins on his stool. He looks tired. The bluish cast from the holographs emphasizes how hard and long he’s worked on this solution._

_“Not always. You know that,” Steve says. He’s long past the little jabs Tony takes about his golly gee attitude those first few months when he woke up in the 21st century. It seems like another lifetime ago. It probably is. How many times can Steve lose his entire life and all of the people he loves before he finally gives up? A tug on his shirt jerks him from his thoughts._

_“What’s this? What’s going on?”_

_Steve swallows down his bravado; it’s something that helps him get through the nightmare of an alien invasion that they just couldn’t stop. “What if, what if we just didn’t?”_

_“Didn’t?” Tony says and sweeps away the different projects. The blue light dissipates and the harsh fluorescent lighting of the lab bay casts everything in an edged relief – sharp and brilliant. “Didn’t what?”_

_Steve licks his lips. “What if we just didn’t? What if.” He gestures to the panels of computers, the servers, the screens. “What if we just stop. What if it doesn’t work. What if the nanites can’t do what we need them to do?”_

_Tony inhales, holds it, taps on the stool, and then releases his breath. “That’s a lot of what ifs that don’t really go together.”_

_“Yeah._

_“But they amount to the idea that you’re getting cold feet like you did before our wedding.”_

_“I never,” Steve says and places his hand on Tony’s knee. “I think you were the one with the cold feet.”_

_“Can you blame me? Tony Stark marrying the poster boy for good. I worried the universe might explode in defiance of our plans.” He tilts his head as he studies Steve. “But this isn’t that. This is fear.”_

_“Don’t say that.” But the taste of it is cold in his mouth, so much colder than the Arctic ice._

_Tony touches his hair, pushes it back from Steve’s forehead. “You really need a haircut,” he whispers, and his eyes don’t meet Steve’s as he talks. “You can’t fool me. I’m scared, too. If we throw the switch and it works. I won’t remember you. You won’t remember this. Time will be erased.”_

_“I’ll remember you, I promise,” Steve says, and he knows it’s an empty promise. How can he remember a past that never happened? If they erase themselves from the timeline and then reset the timeline – there’s nothing to hope for – he’ll be lost to Tony._

_“We have to get over this, Steve,” Tony says. He tries for forceful, but it comes out in a quaver._

_“I know,” Steve says. He does know it. He dropped a plane into the ocean to save the world. He can do this – he can give up everything. Again. He can. But this time it seems like he has so much more to lose. “Is there any way I could remember?”_

_“I don’t know, no one does.” Tony has his hands on Steve’s hands, holding them, clasping them._

_“No, I mean. Could you possibly make it so that the nanites would let me remember?”_

_“What?”_

_“If the nanites are twisting time when I’m in the God Machine, can’t you make it so that they could deposit the memories in my past self? I mean why not?” Steve presses his hands into Tony’s. This wasn’t anything he considered but the idea of it pitches his heart into a racing beat like he’s run a sprint._

_“Hmm, I’m not sure it works like that.”_

_“Can you try?” Steve asks. He wants some kind of assurance. Something to hold him, to tell him it will be worth it. He’ll remember being in love with Tony._

_“There’s no way that I’ll remember. It will be my past self.”_

_“I know. I’ll convince you, I swear,” Steve says and smiles. Just the thought thrills him. He can do it, if this little wish comes true. “Listen, I won’t ask if you did it. I won’t even hope that it gets done. You can try or not. Just try, okay? Okay?”_

_Tony drags him into an embrace, and he shudders in Steve’s arms. He doesn’t whisper into Steve’s ear; he doesn’t vow to do this crazy thing – they’ve already promised the world to save it. This little thing might be one thing too many in a heap of promises._

*oOo*

“So the nanites from the Steve trapped in the singularity are the reason that Steve is having these seizures,” Logan asks.

They’re all holed up in Tony’s lab. Why he allowed furry guy to join them in the lab, he can’t really recall. The guy has information about Steve’s health, so it seems reasonable to invite him along. But it has been three days. So that’s four days of Steve asleep, which seems excessive to Tony, but the doctors can’t get him to wake but won’t count him as comatose now because none of his tests make a comatose state. Except the not waking up part. Tony thinks that should probably be part of the assessment. 

“Stark?”

Tony jolts and grimaces. Wolverine is eating again – in his lab – again. “Yes, no. I’m not sure. From what I can tell the nanites or whatever the technology was that interfaced with the God Machine did it on a quantum level. That led to the collapse of the God Machine and the entrapment of the Ornari and Steve in the field.”

Logan chews disgustingly. He makes Tony’s stomach turn. “So, you can tap into that?”

“It’s a matter of getting the nanites to resonate with at the same quantum – let’s say – frequency for the less educated in the room,” Tony remarks.

“I represent that,” Logan says and gives him a wolfish look. Why isn’t he called Wolfman? Was that already taken? Logan is positively buzzing with excitement. Tony hates him for it, hates everything about it. If they succeed – and Tony knows he will since apparently he’s already succeeded once – then Logan wins the romance battle. Tony loses. He loses his future. A man he would love so much that he would commit his life to. 

“Shut up and get out,” Tony says and pointedly ignores Logan. He stares at the figures before him, working through the different configurations of the nanites until he hears the quiet swish of the doors closing. He slumps back and closes his eyes. It shouldn’t bother him – not this much. Steve isn’t even really his, not really. He can give Steve back his life. He does nothing. He gazes transfixed at the screens for what seems like hours. But then he gives up.

He finds himself walking toward Steve’s room on the medical floor. The doctors aren’t as anxious as they see him. It’s been days with no change. He thinks they should be bowing to him and begging his forgiveness for not getting anywhere with Steve’s prognosis. But truly they have no power over it. None of them really do. He does. He knows he does, but right now, he wants to apologize and say his piece before he finishes the project to disentangle Steve.

Opening the door to the hospital room, Tony steps inside and nods to the nurse. She gives Tony a smile and returns to her work on the computer. Her patient is quiet, unmoving in the bed. It’s been days since the seizure. News outlets have been badgering them for an update on Captain America. Pepper’s been fielding all of the calls, which is all kinds of wrong. It should be Fury or Hill or someone from SHIELD. Somehow or another a spy organization is not good at dealing with the paparazzi. Pepper is, she’s a genius. He’s grateful to her. How she spins no change into anything other than no hope, Tony can’t guess.

At Steve’s side, Tony marks the dark circles marring his features. It’s perplexing. Why would someone sleeping look so very tired? 

_“Maybe it’s because I’m not sleeping at all.”_

_Tony startles and drops Steve’s hand – the Steve lying in the bed next to him. Not the Steve standing only a meter away from him in the shadows of the room. The shadows that move and curve like tendrils of darkness seeping into the room. The velvety texture of the tendrils shutters the air, pocketing it, making it harder to breathe. Tony glances at the nurse who seems to have lost opacity and turned translucent._

_“Who are you?” Tony tries for firm, but it comes out shaky. He rasps in the thin air around him._

_“You know who I am. You know when I am,” the other Steve – the Perfect Seed – that’s what they called him- says._

_“Yeah,” Tony says and looks down at the hand he grasps. Steve’s fingers are limp, frail._

_“I’m not dreaming, you know. Not at all. I’m reliving it. Over and over.”_

_“It sounds damning,” Tony comments and wants to walk away. Far away. The Perfect Seed doesn’t sound evil or daunting, just so god damned lonely and hurt._

_“I’m always going to remember you, Tony. I’m never going to forget.” A pained wince shifts over the Perfect Seeds’ features. “This was the only way.”_

_“You saved us.” Tony concedes that point. “We have to do this. To save him.” He looks down at the inert form of his Steve, not this Steve, not this man who loved another Tony, who married him only to lose everything in sacrifice again._

_“I know.” There’s a little smile on his lips. “It means I get to save you, too.” The Perfect Seed steps back into the shadows, the tendril encompass him. “Say goodbye to Logan for us.”_

As quickly as the apparition appeared, it disappears. Only a cold chill down Tony’s spine tells him anything at all happened. 

“Tony?” He nearly jumps out of his skin when he looks down to see Steve – his Steve- blinking his eyes and shifting slightly in the bed. “What happened?” He lifts up his head and then sinks back down in the pillow. “Don’t tell me.”

“You know what happened,” Tony replies and leaves it at that. He’s not going to chastise Steve for not confessing about the seizures. Even though he’d been told that Steve could bring them on himself, Tony is fairly certain he didn’t try and do it in the middle of a very public diner. 

“Yeah,” Steve says, and a blossom of color reaches his too pale cheeks. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“Well, I’ll forgive you this time.” Tony should spill the beans on all that is happening and all that’s going on, because Steve needs to know that the seizures will never go away. That he’s locked into this cycle, this prison of entanglement. He won’t be on active duty with the Avengers ever again. They have no way to medicate him to try and control the convulsions and ensuing coma like state. 

“Better now.” Steve starts to sit up but Tony places a hand on his shoulder and firmly keeps him in place.

“Maybe we should talk,” Tony says. Every fiber in his body wants to rebel. His nerves are screaming as if he’s in pain. He doesn’t want to lose Steve. Not like this. Sure, he can fuck up the best relationship all on his own, but this – this is just evil forces of doom playing with him.

“I know what you’re going to say Tony,” Steve says and the slightly off, the too earnest attitude Steve portrayed over the last few weeks is nowhere to be found. “You’re going to ask me about the seizures. Is the serum working? Should we call in specialists. Don’t worry, I have them under control. Usually, I can tell when they’re coming on. There’s nothing to be concern-.”

“Steve, stop.” Tony’s voice cuts the air. Sharp and brutal. “I know about the seizures. I know about the memories of another Steve, another Tony. I know about the reality with the Ornari. I know it all.”

Steve closes his eyes and turns his head away as if he’s guilty of all of it, as if he caused the Ornari to attack Earth. “Who told you?” At least he doesn’t deny it.

“Logan.”

Steve bows his head and looks at his hands. “He’s here?”

“Yes. He’s been here for a while. Don’t really know how you traveled with the guy for a year. It’s like living with a bear.” Tony stuffs his hands in his pockets because he doesn’t know if he should take Steve’s hand in his – are they that kind of couple? Are they a couple at all? “So.” He clears his throat. “Just so I know, did you ever have feelings for me or was this just a little walk down fantasy lane?”

Steve places a hand over his eyes and twists his mouth. “I do have feelings for you Tony.” He drops his hand; his eyes are glistening. Tony’s not sure if it’s tears or mania. “I remember things, places, events, times that aren’t real. Not for us. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know you. I saw you fly a nuke into a whole in the sky. It was a one-way trip. I saw that. I know who you are. You’re the guy who invented nanites to save the world, but you’re also that guy who thinks you can’t make a move on me because I’m too innocent even though I’ve been around the world with the guy you call a bear for a year.” He sighs, hard and heavy. “I know who you are, Tony. I came to be with you.”

The words shiver through Tony like an ice storm. They pelt him and he waits for the lights to go out with their fierceness, but it never happens. He hears the words and it takes moments to compute them, to put them together with what he knows, what he fears, and what can be. When he looks at Steve, he doesn’t see earnestness, he sees determination and power. He may have been playing more innocent and earnest before, but he’s shed all of that to show Tony more of who he is and what he’s willing to offer. He thinks tears may sting his eyes. “That’s good to know, because I’m going to tell you something. I want to you remember that after I finish telling you.” 

Tony finds he can’t look Steve in the eyes and so he stares down at his strong hands instead. “We talked with Reed Richards. Bruce and I. And Logan. We all talked, and we figured out how to stop the seizures.”

“Stop the seizures?”

“Yeah. You have to know Steve, you can’t live like this. The doctors said the seizures will eventually lead to brain damage.” He puts up a hand to stop Steve’s protests. “The serum can’t keep up with seizures that last hours. We think that’s part of the reason why you lapse into unconsciousness now is that the serum has to work overtime to repair the damage done.” 

“But you said there’s a way? Did they figure out something I can take?” Steve says it in his best take charge voice, like he’s ready and willing to go to battle.

“You could say that,” Tony says and sighs. He doesn’t want to do this, but there’s no other way. Over the last few days he’s come to terms with the fact that he played around for the last few weeks with Steve, teasing him, playing with him, dating him because he thought Steve would come to his senses and leave. After all, Tony’s an arrogant son of a bitch according to Natasha’s profile of him (not in so many words, of course). Eventually, Steve was going to figure it out; he’s a smart dude. But the fact is while Tony was playing, he was also denying truths that had laid dormant for so long it physically hurts inside to actually admit it. The moment he saw Steve, the moment he woke up from the ice, Tony knew – he knew this man would change his life forever. He would make him strive to be better, he would make him challenge the world to be better. Steve would change everything for him and Tony would celebrate it always. Because that’s what love does.

Now, he has to man up and give it all up. “We have a way to cut off the seizures with nanites.”

“Nanites?” Steve murmurs and then shakes his head. “No, no. That’s what happened before. That’s what you did before. That’s-.”

“That’s the only way to cut off the resonances and stop the entanglement. I know it sounds crazy but the Steve from that other reality is affecting you. If this continues, the God Machine or whatever the fuck it is will destroy you. You. In this reality, not in that other reality. Now. Here. You.” He sucks in a breath because the idea, the picture he’s painting terrifies him. 

Steve stares down at his hands, useless in his lap. “I half believed I made it up.”

“If only,” Tony says. “I wish you had. But the truth is – we can do the experiments to test it out, but all evidence points to it. You are not going crazy, Steve. I saw it too. My other self in that other reality must have somehow survived the tentacles or whatever the hell it was stabbing me or him.” God it got so damned confusing. “So, we know it’s not a fantasy or a delusion. Unless that stuff is contagious.”

“But you’ll do the experiments to verify it?” Steve asks. It sounds like the words hurt him to say.

“Yes, if you want. Otherwise we can just jump forward and give you the injection of the nanites once I’m sure I have the programming right,” Tony says. It’s not like disentangling particles is an easy task. Just an impossible one, and who said Tony Stark didn’t do the impossible ten times a day? “Then we inject the nanites and they do their job. You’ll be free of him. Part of the procedure will actually tell us if it’s real or not. The nanites will be harmless to you, and should only affect the resonance. If it works, the connection is lost. If it doesn’t, well we have a different and perhaps psychological issues on our hands.”

Steve whispers something and, to Tony, it seems like he can’t look up and meet his gaze. “It means all my memories are false, fake. They’re his memories. The other Steve.”

“No.” Tony wills it to be true. “No, it happened but then you jumped back in time. It split realities. That’s how this works. You can’t change your past, not the memories. Those events happened to you. But somehow or another when they trapped the Ornari in the singularity, you split? We’re not sure. You’re both in the singularity and not. It’s your past and not. I’m sorry I can’t make it any clearer than that.”

“But the fact is once you split us, disentangle us, we’ll be separate. He’ll be the Steve who-.” He halts as if the words taste like acid on his tongue. “It won’t happen to me; it won’t be my future. It never really happened.”

“Not in our reality, no. But in the reality you lived in – yes.”

Steve throws his head back on the pillow and mutters, “This is giving me a headache.”

“You and me both.”

Steve stays quiet for a minute and then asks, “You said it was happening to you? The seizures?”

“Not really seizures. Just like visions or images. Maybe they are seizures – maybe their petit mal seizures I don’t know and you’re having the big granddaddy seizures. We have to do something, Steve.” Maybe using someone’s name lends gravity and weight to the words. 

“If you do it, then will I still remember?” Steve asks. He hasn’t looked at Tony. He’s staring up at the ceiling over his bed. 

“I don’t know. You should?” Tony shrugs. “We’re not changing your brain. We’re only going to cut you off from him so the seizures and infiltrating shared lives will be stopped.”

“So I may remember, but the memories won’t really be mine anymore,” Steve says. His eyes are closed now as if he’s willing the memories to stay within him. “They’ll be like watching a movie or something.”

“Kind of. It will be your past, but not our past. Not anyone else’s. Nothing is a firm answer here.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He finally looks at Tony. Reaching out, he grasps Tony’s hand. “I liked the memories. I liked them a lot, Tony. I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you when I came to the Tower. It’s kind of hard to tell someone that they lived a whole other life with you that they don’t remember.”

Tony smiles, but it feels like a lie. 

“If it means anything at all, I wish it were true. Well, not the Ornari and the whole end of the world thing,” Steve says, and his voice is rueful with pain. “I wish we had what they had.”

Tony squeezes Steve’s hand and never wants to let go. He never wants to leave this moment because it feels like he’s saying goodbye. He knows it’s ridiculous to think that way. It isn’t goodbye. They’ve only just started, but now there’s a whole lifetime between them. 

“We’re gonna have more Steve.” It might be his bravado speaking, it might be hope and wishes, but he’s not letting go. Not now. “We have a whole lifetime because of them.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Tony leans over the bed and kisses Steve on the temple. He does it slowly, tenderly, and softly. “I’m right.”

*oOo*

When Logan walks into his hospital room, Steve is sitting on the side of the bed with his bare feet dangling over the edge. They gave him scrubs instead of the hospital gown which Steve is grateful for, but he wishes he could just have some regular clothes and get out of the medical bay floor of the Tower. That’s not happening, not yet anyway. Bruce isn’t convinced that Steve’s not going to take a header off the building or walk into traffic or set the place on fire all the sudden if another seizure attacks him. 

Steve tried to force the issue but when they quizzed him about whether or not he could guarantee that he was seizure free, Steve couldn’t promise anything. While he doesn’t bring them on anymore – or at least he hasn’t since Tony told him that it was dangerous and his brain was actually taking a beating with each event, Steve doesn’t know if they will come on spontaneously like they did in the diner. He doesn’t want another incident, not one that can be plastered all over the internet. So he agreed to stay where they could monitor him while the doctors took tests and checked his vitals. It leaves him completely bored and anxious at the same time. It makes for very frustrated days.

“How they treating you, kid?” Logan asks as he dumps two large paper bags on the service tray table. One of the bags has a stain of grease on it. 

“Okay.” Steve doesn’t give it much thought; his stomach rumbles as he smells the fries and the burgers. 

“Ah, but maybe not feeding you the good stuff.” Logan tears open the bags and pulls out massive burgers and multiple servings of fries. “I got shakes, too. Vanilla shake for you. I don’t know how you can pass up chocolate for vanilla. It’s a sin.”

“What’s a sin is not knowing the difference between the plebian love of chocolate and the connoisseur love of vanilla.” Steve grabs for the shakes and stabs the top of the cup with a straw, drinking it. The first thick taste of the vanilla ice cream floods his mouth and he delights in it. He smiles but then the whole of the situation presses down on him and looks away from Logan, toward the windows of the hospital room.

“Have a burger.” Logan places a burger in his lap and then hooks a chair with the toe of his boot to bring it closer to the bed. He settles in it and chows down on his burger. 

Steve brings his attention back to the meal. He should be grateful, but the trepidation fills him and his stomach clenches instead. “I’m not sure I’m hungry.” Which is patently ridiculous since his stomach has been singing an opera of just how empty it is.

“Eat.” Logan places his half-devoured burger on the tray table and reaches for his shake. “I’m here to tell you something, Steve. Something important.”

Between the seconds that Lgoan speaks and the breath Steve takes, he lives an entire life. He recalls the other life, the one where he left Logan because he couldn’t sit on the sidelines. He had to go back to New York, to the world, and do his duty again. He remembers the terror of the invasion, how they thought they could hold it back, but not even the full strength of the world’s armed forces could stop the Ornari. He recalls the harried exodus as they escaped the city, as they rounded up as many civilians as possible to get away from the growing terror. Most of all, he remembers Tony. He doesn’t want to lose this; he never wants to lose the memories. It’s a life he may never live, but it’s one he doesn’t want to surrender.

“You got to do this – this thing that Stark thought up to cure you,” Logan says. When Steve looks at Logan, the man can’t meet his gaze. “If you don’t the seizures are going to turn your brain to mush.”

He’s not telling Steve anything he already doesn’t know. 

“What you had within that other life, isn’t yours. Not anymore.” Logan faces him then, his eyes piercing and brutal. “We had something. We had something based reality. Our reality.”

The argument is sound. Steve isn’t one to believe in fairy tales. He grew up in the Great Depression. “I know that.” But what does he feel about reality verses the fairy tale? His stomach knots and the idea of eating curdles. His throat thickens; he swallows compulsively. 

“But I’m not here to convince you to pick me. I’m here to convince you to pick yourself.” Logan massages his hands, grasping and ungrasping them as if the claw ache within him. His head bows. His gaze goes to the floor. “I’ve loved you kid, god since way before. Since that time during the War that we crossed paths and we went and liberated that camp of prisoners. You remember. You were so damned idealistic. I felt like a kid again, felt like anything was possible.” He rubs at his eyes but never looks up at Steve. “I loved you then. I left because of that- because I couldn’t stay with you. I couldn’t admit to myself how much head over heels I was.

“Then I see you again – now,” Logan hisses. “I thought you were dead and you turn up alive in New York. Shit, I didn’t think we would ever be together again. But damn, here we are.” He sits back and lets his head fall back so that he’s staring at the ceiling. “I had you for a while. I’m not going to lie to you.” Now he straightens and looks directly at Steve. “I love you. I would move the fucking world for you. I would stab Stark in the heart if I knew you would love me back. But I know – you would leave me anyhow. I’m escaping who I am – you – you’re always becoming who you are. You’re always building it, you embrace it. God, kid. I need you more than air.” He covers his face and for a long moment, Steve thinks he might be crying – slight tears. When he drops his hands, his eyes are dry but red. “You do this thing. Save yourself. Where ever you end up, you’re strong enough to build yourself up again.”

“I did love you, Logan. I still do,” Steve admits. It hurts part of his inner truths to say it. 

“You love me, but you’re not in love with me. Not the way you should,” Logan says. “I’ve been around long enough to know the difference.” He reaches up as if he’s trying to pull out a cigar from his mouth, but there isn’t any. He fists his hands instead and lets them drop to his lap. “You and me, we might be good for a while, but you want things – things I don’t want anymore. I’ve seen too much of humanity, known too much about it, to ever really want to know more. You see humanity at its best or see its potential. I’m not there. I see the flip side. Maybe we’re opposites in that way, and maybe that’s part of the attraction for you.”

Steve swallows down the hurt, the truth spears him harder and harsher than any knife. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard Logan speak so much in his entire life. 

“I’ll stay for the procedure, but I’m not sticking around. I want to make sure you’re all right, kid. But that’s all. I gotta go. There are – things I need to do.”

Steve nods. Logan has always been a loner. Even when he tries to reach out and make attachments, they always unravel on him or he tears them apart, frays them to snap. It’s his way and Steve should be happy that the burden of choice has been lifted from his shoulders. It still fissures something deep inside. 

“Eat your burger. It’s getting cold.”

They eat, but don’t speak again.

*oOo*  
His heart gallops in his chest like a racehorse breaking for the finish line. Rubbing just left of the arc reactor does nothing to alleviate the burst of pain. He knows its phantom pain, but hell if it doesn’t always haunt him during the most stressful times. The thoughts in his brain mix around like globs of jelly. Nothing sets right. He’s had several more episodes where he _remembers_ the other time, the other reality. Tony wonders if that means the other him, the other Tony is waking up, becoming aware, recovering from whatever they did to him. But then again, he doesn’t have to think _whatever_ because he knows. 

_“Tony,” Steve cries out. “No, don’t. Don’t do this.”_

_Black inky tendrils surround them. Multiple tentacles wrap around Steve, holding him an arm’s reach away from Tony. One tendril reshapes changing into something like an interfacing probe. Even as Tony struggles to get to Steve, to fight off the oily vines, one tendril encircles Tony’s waist capturing him. The probe slithers behind Tony, around the back of his neck. The moment it spears into the base of his skull everything goes white, and the pain bleaches out every other sensation. Tony tries to say something, to feel something other than the absolute finality of the moment as the probe pulses and interweaves within his brain. He has no voice; he has no substance. He feels his body shudder and the room melt around him, the tendrils have him – consuming him. He hears someone screaming and he thinks it might be him._

_“Stop, God damn it, you’re killing him,” Steve yells. His voice is the last thing that Tony hears before he succumbs to their invasion of his brain._

Even though Tony should be horrified by his alternate self’s fate, he can’t get the broken sound of Steve calling for him, begging them not to do it, praying for Tony’s life. He knows how much they meant to one another. Hand in glove. They were different but made to fit to one another. He doesn’t have to query Richards again about it, because he knows his answer. In whatever universe Tony Stark and Steve Rogers exist, they are together like the Earth and the Moon, endlessly circling each other – tugging and pulling on one another. One without the other cannot exist. They were made for one another. There’s no denying it.

He finalizes the plans for the nanites and has JARVIS manufacture them. It will take thirty-six hours. He takes his time. He calls Rhodey and they play the games they always do, teasing and talking – an easy comradery. After, Tony talks to Pepper. She knows something’s off, something’s wrong. She makes him promise not to do anything stupid. He only scoffs and tells her stupid isn’t in his vocabulary. He can imagine her wistful smile when he disconnects the phone line. 

Bruce helps Tony go through the final checks and calculations, though he’s more subdued than usual. He knows Tony’s been having more visions, more images are crowding his brain. It means big time seizures are just a petit mal one away. The doctors want to run tests, Tony refuses. All through the wait, Tony steers clear of Steve. He can’t say why exactly, but it might be that he wants Steve to come to him – though he already did once. Steve broke off his relationship with Logan and came back to Tony. He specifically sought out Tony. It might be greedy, but Tony wants him to do it one last time.

He doesn’t. 

Tony thinks the doctors won’t allow Steve out of the hospital bay but then he finds Steve in the kitchen the next morning, making coffee, a gloomy look casting shadows over his face. 

“Tony,” Steve says. There’s a hint of surprise and a lot of apprehension in his voice. 

“Thought the doctors weren’t allowing you out of the med floor,” Tony says and goes to the fridge. He opens it just to stare in it. The timer in his head tells him he has 4 more hours before the nanites are ready – all the validation testing will be completed. 

“Yeah. They wanted to keep me there. I wanted to see the city one last time,” Steve says and then must realize what he inferred. “Not that this won’t work.”

“It’ll work.” Tony closes the fridge without getting anything out of it. He considers Steve’s words and then adds, “We got a few hours. Want to go get something to eat?” If Steve won’t come to him, Tony is that desperate that he’ll make the play himself.

“Are you sure, last time I ended up taking a header in a very public restaurant.” Steve puts the coffee down. Tony can tell he’s antsy to get out. 

“Maybe we can just go to the observation deck, have picnic. We can order in?” Tony amends.

Steve smiles and Tony hates the fact that he feels all the more right with the world because of it. They order Thai, though it is far too early in the morning for hot pots and pad Thai – Tony doesn’t care. He gets three orders of pot stickers. They head up to the deck as soon as the meal is delivered. It’s 10:30 in the morning. They have two hours until all of the last testing is done on the nanites. Two hours before they are disentangled.

The rooftop observation deck has every amenity anyone could ever ask for, from telescopes to hot tubs to a small shaded area with green grass and miniature trees with an umbrella and chairs. Somehow or another, they end up on the grass, sitting there without a blanket but with cushions stolen from the lounge chairs. The hot pot is on a wooden platter and the pad Thai is on a dish. They both have chopsticks which have been abandoned for forks and spoons. 

After they eat in comfortable silence, Tony says, “This is going to work, you know.”

“I know.” Steve chews the pot sticker – for this he uses chop sticks. His eyes wander away from Tony, as if he wants to avoid the truth. His confidence with the chopsticks wavers and he drops the one he tried to pick up. While he works to get it again, he adds, “I just wonder which one is really me.”

“What do you mean?” Tony doesn’t really need to ask. Over the last few days he’s had the same thought, the same fear.

When Steve looks at him again, their sights line up and Tony’s world shakes beneath him. “What if I lose everything?”

“You won’t lose your memories,” Tony says. “They will always be your memories. When this was done a fork was placed in the road and a new branched reality appeared.”

“The one we occupy.”

Tony nods. “And you still have the memories.”

“Of what I swear I did before – in the future. And it doesn’t make sense and it-.” He stops and stares at the cityscape around him. His words are low this time. “It seems I keep losing my world. Over and over again.”

Tony reaches out and grasps Steve’s hand. It seems more intimate than a month should feel. “You’re not losing everything. You’re not.” Steve tightens his grip as if Tony is a lifeline to keeping him stalwart and firmly in place in this reality. Tony can’t get the images out of his head, the reality where this man is supposed to be his husband. He can’t leave it alone. It’s like a loose thread in a sweater that he just tears at, picking and picking until all the weaving comes undone. “The images are too real, Steve. I can’t let you go. I can never let you go.”

Steve shivers under his touch. “We don’t even know one another.”

“How different are you than the man who left Logan and married that other Tony? How different? Does he feel like you? Does he think like you?”

“God, Tony!” Steve says and yanks his hand away. He’s blinking rapidly. “Don’t do that. I can’t.” His hands are pressed on his temples. “I can’t hear it. It’s everything I want. It’s like a fantasy. But I can’t have it. It’s not real. It’s a fairy tale.”

Steve gets up and deliberately walks away, toward the balustrade to look out on the city. “It’s all changed. From the 40s. And from when the Ornari are here. They wiped it off the face of the map, you know. New York was crushed, because of us. Gone.”

“Steve.” Tony finds himself standing and walking to Steve’s side. He clasps Steve’s hand again. “Don’t leave me.”

“I don’t want to.” Steve never looks at him.

*oOo*  
It’s surprisingly fast. The nanites are prepped and injected within the first 30 minutes after Tony confirms that all of the tests indicate they have a working batch. Logan and Bruce sit in the background of the lab while a nurse helps inject Tony and Steve. Tony flinches once when the needle pierces him. He doesn’t really like anyone touching him and least of all medical staff. Steve doesn’t react when the black liquid disappears into his vein. They sit there opposite one another on stools as the nurse cleans up the needles, tapes on the bandages, and then tells them to stay and not leave while JARVIS monitors them for any ill effects.

Tony doesn’t watch Steve. He keeps his eyes steadily on a pinpoint on the wall over his shoulder. Steve follows suit and reverts his focus to his lap where his hands lay useless and limp. Tony wonders if he ever itches for things not around anymore. Like rotary telephones or wringer washers. Steve sits impassively, not saying anything. In the background, Tony feels the heat of Bruce and Logan waiting for the impossible to happen. He’s not exactly sure what he expects to happen.

After a long fifteen minutes in silence, Logan speaks up. “So did it work?”

“I don’t know,” Tony answers and spins on his stool. The nurse dismissed herself as soon as the fifteen-minute timer chimed. Who decided on fifteen minutes, Tony has no idea. 

Logan ambles over to Steve. Finally, Steve lifts his eyes and sees something, someone in the room. “Well, you need to try and bring on the seizure.”

Bruce agrees. It’s the only way to find out if the disentanglement has worked. They could do some more complex tests. But this is simple and easy – and will give them the answer in only minutes.

“Sir, a seizure may lead to Captain Rogers entering another comatose state,” JARVIS states.

“I’ll do it,” Steve says, maybe a bit too quickly. 

Logan must share the same hesitation Tony feels based on the twist of his mouth and the narrowing of his eyes. It is the easiest way to test it, though, so Tony nods.

“Let’s move this to the couch at least.” Logan points to the ratty sofa Tony saved from his graduate school days. “That way if he falls over, he won’t give himself a concussion on top of other brain damage.”

Steve heads to the couch. With his best Captain voice, he explains, “Usually I’m able to open the door – sorry that’s what I’ve been calling it to myself all this time – within a few minutes of thinking about it. It only takes a few minutes, but it’s always easier if I’m drawing a memory.”

Tony searches around and grabs his stenopad. He rarely uses it, but sometimes when Pepper comes in he likes to pretend he’s too busy to talk to her about the mundane business stuff. He uses it to doodle. He scoops up a pen. “Will this do?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “It won’t be a Rembrandt.” 

Tony saw the sketches that Steve did before, so the words are on the tip of his tongue, but he sucks back - _it will be to me_. They aren’t those other people. 

Bruce, Logan, and Tony form a semi-circle around the couch, standing over Steve as he picks up the pen. He scrunches up his nose and says, “It’s kind of hard to do this with an audience.” 

Tony inhales, steadies himself, and then nods. “Okay, everyone.” They walk to the other side of the lab and Tony directs JARVIS, “Keep an eye on Cap.”

“Yes, sir. I will monitor all of his vital signs.”

Logan leans against the corner of the lab near the exit. His eyes are lidded with shadows and he’s become more reticent than he usually is. Bruce studies Tony, his one arm crossed over his chest, the other propped on it as he strokes his unshaven jaw. They wait. Tony crosses over to a computer terminal and starts playing with numbers, ways to test the nanites. He pings the ones running around in his blood. They ping back. He figures the nanites are good for at least five years, after that they’ll have to reinject. Bruce stands over his shoulder. He rocks slightly as if he’s trying to sooth himself. 

“Sir?”

“JARVIS?” All of them perk up at the sound of the AI.

“Captain Rogers is not having a seizure but seems to be in the midst of a panic attack.”

“Shit!” Tony hears and then realizes it’s him. He rushes over to Steve with both Bruce and Logan on his tail. The pad and pen are forgotten on the floor and Steve is panting in anguished breaths. He’s dripping with sweat but when Tony touches him, he feels cold, clammy. “Steve. Steve! You’re here. You’re with us.”

In the background, Tony hears the distinctive slash and slide of Logan’s claws, but he ignores it. If Logan gets out of control, Bruce is here. The Hulk can stop the Wolverine. 

Steve quakes. His hands at his temples shake. He pitches forward, bending nearly in two. “I know. I know.” He’s blinking and sucking in breath like a fish out of water. “I know. I just-.”

“What? What is it?” Tony says as he curves over Steve, his arm on his back.

“I saw it. I saw it leave. I saw the entanglement and then it snapped off. But not like a light switch, like a viper attacking. It – they tried to stay linked. They tried to save the entanglement. Does that sound insane?” Steve’s barely holding it together. His large frame looks like it might shatter to pieces, falling all over the floor. 

“No.” Tony doesn’t know what else to say. This whole thing is insane. “Everything is crazy, Steve. But you can’t get there anymore. Right?”

Steve closes his eyes and clamps a hand over his face. “Yeah. Not anymore. I can’t feel it. Not the pathway. It’s gone. Feels like someone cut off my limbs.”

A cold sweeps over Tony and he feels it too like an echo, a phantom of something that used to be but is no more. “It’s gone.”

Logan retracts his claws and then Tony hears his footsteps pad away. The doors to the lab open and close. He’s gone. Bruce stays close for another few minutes, checking on Steve as he slowly comes back to himself, as he rests his head on the couch, and finally lays down lengthwise. Steve assures Bruce that he’ll rest and the good doctor leaves them alone.

Tony finds himself sitting on the edge of the couch. “I don’t know if I have the right to ask this, but can I?” He motions to the couch. It’s wide, not exactly wide enough for both of them, but he could sneak onto it easily enough. 

“Please.” 

Tony curls onto him and, without pause, Steve wraps his arm around him. “I don’t want you to be a replacement for him. I want to know you, Tony. I want to get to know everything about you. I want to know how you tick. I want to know why we’re-.” He stops and swallows as if he’s hard to face.

“Meant to be?” Tony offers. It sounds silly. There’s no such thing as soul mates or destiny or fate, but somehow or another they are two parts to a whole. 

Steve doesn’t answer just holds Tony tighter and they stay that way for the rest of the day, holding tight on what they have in the here and now…

It’s only later, much later when they know one another and when they are at peace with who they are than Steve asks Tony a question that changes everything. 

“Who do you think made them?”

They are lying in bed, spent and happy against the morning light. Tony has never known someone as strong and as forward in what he wants in bed as Steve. When Tony woke up this morning, Steve had been sitting watching him. He scooped him up and planted him on his lap, together they found their way to fruition. After then, Steve took Tony slower, preparing him, scissoring his fingers and then dragging them in and out until Tony nearly cried with need. Tears had prickled his eyes as he begged for release. Steve gave him more but made him wait. When he’d come a second time that morning it fragmented every part of his soul into shards that glittered in the morning light. Steve kissed him back to reality.

Now, they lay quietly in the aftermath of their lovemaking. Tony cannot believe how time has dilated and changed. Only half a year ago Steve came to him, splintered and broken himself, but in many ways that built their bridge. They both crossed the bridge to find a new peace together in a new future, their future.

“What do you mean?” Tony’s the little spoon today. Sometimes Steve needs him to be the big spoon. Sometimes Tony takes his time with Steve and breaks him apart into the frail small man he used to be and then that’s when Tony tells Steve how much he loves him. But today Tony needs the security that only Steve can give him, not even his suit of armor feels as protective and secure.

Steve repeats, “I mean, who made the Ornari.”

“I’m not sure what you mean? Are you talking about God? You know how I feel-.” Tony twists to look at Steve.

Steve kisses his ear and then whispers, “Not God, but what intelligent species made the Ornari or made the God Machine.”

Laying on his side, Tony flips over and looks up at Steve. “What are you talking about?”

“The God Machine. The reason they need the Perfect Seed. The seed in the central core of the God Machine makes the Ornari sentient beings. So that means someone made the God Machine and the bio-organic? Is that the word? The bio-organic stuff that made up the tendrils or whatever they were of the Ornari.” Steve kisses Tony’s temple. “It means-.”

“It means someone made the Ornari. It means-.”

Steve lies back down on the bed and pulls Tony toward him. “It means they’re still out there.”

The realization steals the breath from his lungs, but Steve doesn’t allow him to face it on his own. He wraps Tony in his arms and legs. They are entangled. He shudders. He knows what happened when the Ornari attacked that other reality. He knows that the other reality saved theirs from the Ornari. 

“Shh,” Steve whispers as he kisses the crown of Tony’s head. 

Tony buries his face in Steve’s shoulder, lets the strength and power pour over him. The fear is prominent, but the truth of who they are, what they are – entangled throughout realities – gives them the power to survive.

THE END


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art by snowzapped

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for taking a risk and reading this story!! Hope you enjoyed it!!
> 
> Oh quantum entanglement is real - but hell if I can understand all of it. So I made shit up. I also made up the Kiminsky proposition. Sounds official, doesn't it?? :)


End file.
